Registan Square and its Madrasahs

Registan Square, Samarkand

Registan Square is the heart of Samarkand. The word Registan means "sandy place". Registan arose long before the Mongol invasion as a center of crafts and trade. This is the intersection of six roads that go from the city gates. Registan is surrounded on three sides by magnificent buildings: Ulugbek Madrasah (1417 - 1420), Sher-Dor Madrasah (1619 - 1636), Tilla-Kori Madrasah (1647 - 1660).

During the reign of Tamerlane, Registan was a city square, Tamerlane's troops going on campaigns, gathered before the performance from the city on this square. Tamerlane’s grandson Mirzo Ulugbek, the great patron of sciences and the scientist himself, changed the purpose of the square during his reign.

In the XVII century, two monumental buildings of the Sher-dor and Tilla-Kori madrasahs were built on the Registan. They are notable for their impressive size and luxury of decoration, although in terms of their artistic and architectural merits they are still inferior to their prototype - the immortal monument of architecture - Ulugbek madrasah.

The method of comparing monumental buildings of the same type that was widespread at that time received a new solution here. The facades of buildings are located in such a way that the area uniting them is perceived as a large courtyard open on one side with three huge peshtaks. Before the gaze of a man approaching the Registan, a spectacle full of unusual greatness immediately opens.

Huge geometrically clear architectural volumes are rhythmically repeated. The pestons of the buildings are facing the viewer with gigantic arches, which with their lancet, pointed upward shape make you feel the colossal weight of the architectural mass, pressing on powerful pylons and walls. The arches seemed to freeze in great tension, and it seems that some supernatural force makes standing motionless arrays of walls, domes, pylons and minarets, on the surface of which bright colors shimmer lined with tiles patterns and inscriptions calmly shimmer.

A powerful colorful accord sounds bright tiled decoration, sometimes covering a large plane of walls and pylons with a colored grid, then forming colorfully saturated, with a predominance of blue, blue or orange-yellow colored spots in the niches of non-units, in the tympans of arches, on the ribbed surface of the domes.

Entrance fee: 4 USD

Top Sights of Samarkand

Registan Square in Samarkand

Registan Square, Samarkand