Pick up from Tashkent address/hotel/airport/train station

The name means "the Living King", and this is the most beautiful place in Samarkand — less a cemetery than a narrow blue street climbing a hillside, lined on both sides with tombs faced in glazed tile. Over twenty structures, a few from the eleventh century but most built by Timur's family for their own dead. At the top lies Kusam ibn Abbas, a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, who by legend was wounded here and hid in a well where he still lives. Forty worn steps take you up. Ask your guide what you are supposed to count on the way down.

Samarkand's living market, trading on the same ground for six centuries. Pyramids of dried apricots and raisins, sacks of spices, and stacks of the round bread Samarkand is famous for. Your guide will put things in your hand to taste as you walk.

Built on Timur's order to be the largest mosque in the Islamic world, and so ambitious it began collapsing in his lifetime. The scale is still astonishing — a portal thirty-five metres high and a courtyard you can lose people in.

the place the whole morning has been leading to: the tomb of Timur himself. Beneath a ribbed turquoise dome gilded inside to imitate a starry sky, a single slab of dark green jade marks his grave. His sons, his grandson Ulugbek, and the teacher he asked to be buried above him all lie here. This building became the model for the Mughal tombs of India — the Taj Mahal among them.

Three madrasahs facing each other across an open square — one of the great sights of the Islamic world, and the reason most people come to Uzbekistan. You arrive deliberately late in the day, when the light drops, the tilework turns from turquoise to gold, and the day-trip crowds have already left for the station.