Bukhara

Bukhara has been a city for more than two thousand years, and it is best understood on foot. The old town is compact: from the Ark, the fortress of the emirs, to the pool at Lyabi-Hauz is a walk of a quarter of an hour past madrasas, mosques and the three trading domes built where the streets cross. Nothing here needs a car, and much of what matters can be reached before breakfast.

The Kalyan minaret has stood since the twelfth century, tall enough that Genghis Khan is said to have spared it. At its foot, the Po-i-Kalyan ensemble pairs the Friday mosque with the Mir-i-Arab madrasa, still a working school. Across the old town, the Samanid mausoleum, a cube of patterned brick from the tenth century, is older than almost anything else standing in Central Asia. In the evening, Lyabi-Hauz fills with families under the old mulberry trees.

Bukhara is also the city where craft is most visible: gold embroidery, miniature painting, knives, carpets and the suzani of the surrounding villages, sold under the trading domes and made in the workshops behind them. We arrange visits to the workshops that do not look for visitors, and a dinner in an old courtyard house rather than a restaurant. Two nights is the minimum; the city gives most to those who stay a third and leave one evening without a plan.