Registan Square

Three massive, blue-tiled madrasas frame the Registan, their arched portals rising high above the public square. Since the fifteenth century, this site anchored the intellectual life of Samarkand. Ulugh Beg, the grandson of Tamerlane, built the first school here to teach astronomy and mathematics. When the city’s governor Yalangtush Bahadur expanded the square two hundred years later, he demanded his architects mirror the original design to achieve perfect symmetry. The result left the desert floor covered in intricate, geometric patterns of fired brick.