Itchan Kala

Itchan Kala is the walled inner town of Khiva, and the most complete surviving example of a medieval Central Asian trading city on the Silk Road. The walls that surround the city were built and rebuilt over several centuries, and the current ramparts date mainly from the nineteenth century, though the city plan itself preserves the layout of a much older settlement. Within these walls there are more than fifty historic monuments, including mosques, madrassas, minarets and the summer palace of the Khans of Khwarezm. The city is entered through one of four monumental gates, each named for the direction it faces and the trade route it once controlled. Inside, the streets are narrow and shaded, and the buildings display a remarkable range of tilework techniques from simple carved gypsum to elaborate painted and gilded surfaces. The Kalta Minor Minaret, started in the nineteenth century by the Khan of Khwarezm, was intended to be the tallest minaret in Central Asia but was never finished, stopping abruptly at a height of twenty-nine metres and creating a strange and unforgettable silhouette against the sky.

The Djuma Mosque, whose current form dates from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, occupies the site of a mosque first built in the tenth century and retains a forest of carved wooden columns, some of which are reported to be over a thousand years old. The Itchan Kala has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990, and it is widely regarded as an open-air museum where the fabric of the city itself is the collection. Walking through the gates in the early morning, before the tour groups arrive, gives a strong impression of what the city must have felt like during its years as a centre of the Central Asian caravan trade. The name means Inner City in the Karakalpak language, and the settlement has been continuously inhabited for over two thousand years. The Tash Hauli Palace, the last residence of the Khans of Khwarezm, is one of the most elaborate buildings inside the walls, with four courtyards decorated with carved wood, painted ceilings and tilework that illustrate the final flowering of Khwarezmian palatial architecture in the nineteenth century. The Ala Kul Khan Caravanserai, just outside the west gate, offers a sense of the scale of commercial traffic that once passed through the city, with its high walls and symmetrical stables designed to accommodate hundreds of animals at a time.

Itchan Kala is the walled inner town of Khiva, Uzbekistan. UNESCO-listed since 1990, it is the most complete surviving medieval Silk Road trading city in Central Asia.