UZ · Curated travel guide
Registan, Gur-e-Amir, Bibi-Khanym Mosque and 7 more — what each one is, and why it is worth the detour.
Chosen from everything Wikidata knows about Uzbekistan and ranked by how many Wikipedia language editions describe them, which is about as close to "famous" as open data gets.
Historical center of Samarkand, Uzbekistan
Officially “Registan Square”: a historic public square in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, which was the heart of the Timurid Empire and afterwards the city's centre for trade, learning and ceremony.
Photo: Bernard Gagnon, CC0
Mausoleum in Samarkand, Uzbekistan
Also written Guri Amir, the mausoleum of Timur, the Turco-Mongol conqueror, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. It holds an important place in Turkestan's architectural history as a forerunner of, and influence on, the later Mughal tombs, among them the Taj Mahal in Agra, Humayun's Tomb in Delhi and the Bagh-e-Babur in Kabul, built by Timur's descendants, the Mughals, who shaped Indian culture with Central Asian influences.
Photo: Arina Pan, CC BY-SA 4.0
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Mosque in Samarkand, Uzbekistan
Among the most important monuments in Samarkand, Uzbekistan: a mosque that, in the 15th century, ranked with the biggest and most magnificent in the Islamic world.
Photo: David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada, CC BY 2.0
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Observatory in Samarkand, Uzbekistan
An observatory in present-day Samarkand, Uzbekistan, built in the 1420s by Ulugh Beg, a Timurid astronomer. A school of astronomy founded under the Timurid Empire, it was the last of its kind in the medieval Islamic period.
Photo: Petar Milošević, CC BY-SA 4.0
Lake in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan
An endorheic salt lake that had Kazakhstan on its northern side and Uzbekistan on its southern. It started shrinking in the 1960s and by 2007 had mostly turned into desert. It lay in Kazakhstan's Kyzylorda and Aktobe regions and in Uzbekistan's autonomous region of Karakalpakstan.
Photo: NASA, derivative work by Zafiroblue05 at en.wikipedia, Public domain
Desert in the former lake bed of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan
A desert that has formed since 1960 on the bed of the former Aral Sea, south and east of what is left of the Aral Sea's Eastern Basin, in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
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Minaret in Bukhara, Uzbekistan
Part of Bukhara's Po-i-Kalyan mosque complex, in Uzbekistan: a minaret counted among the city's most prominent landmarks.
Photo: Petar Milošević, CC BY-SA 4.0
Mausoleum in Bukhara, Uzbekistan
A mausoleum in the north-western part of Bukhara, Uzbekistan, just outside the city's historic centre. Built in the 10th century CE, it is where the Samanids were buried, the powerful Islamic dynasty that ruled the Samanid Empire from approximately 900 to 1000.
Photo: Hylgeriak / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Necropolis in Samarkand, Uzbekistan
A necropolis in the north-east of Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Photo: Vaurien, CC BY-SA 3.0 de
Broadcast tower in Uzbekistan
Properly the Tashkent Television Tower, a tower 375-metre-high (1,230 ft) in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the twelfth-tallest tower on Earth, begun in 1978.
Photo: ShNajimova, CC BY 4.0
Officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, a sovereign Central Asian country. It is doubly landlocked, which only one other country on Earth, Liechtenstein, also is. Kazakhstan lies to its north, Kyrgyzstan to its northeast, Tajikistan to its southeast, Afghanistan to its south and Turkmenistan to its south-west.
Officially The Republic of Uzbekistan. Known locally as O‘zbekiston Ўзбекистон.
Based on the Wikipedia article, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0: the facts are Wikipedia's, the wording is this site's.
This guide lists 10: Registan, Gur-e-Amir, Bibi-Khanym Mosque and Ulugh Beg Observatory and others.
By machine, from open data, with no human ranking them and nobody able to pay for a place on the list. Everything Wikidata records in Uzbekistan that is a building, a landform, a protected area or a tourist attraction, has coordinates, a photograph and an English Wikipedia article, is ranked by how many Wikipedia language editions wrote about it. Provinces, cities, airports, stations and stretches of sea shared with the neighbours are filtered out.
Uzbek. The currency is UZS.
A travel eSIM is usually the cheapest way, and avoids a roaming bill. The plans suggested at the foot of this guide start at $2.51 for 2GB per day. The eSIM is data-only and sits alongside your normal SIM, so calls, texts and WhatsApp keep working on your own number.
Beeline. Your phone picks whichever has the best signal where you are, the same way a local phone does.
Maps, tickets and translation all want data, and roaming is the expensive way to get it. A Computatus eSIM eSIM connects to Beeline once you land, and installs by QR code before you leave.
| Plan | Data | Valid | Price | Order |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2GB per day Cheapest | 2 GB | 1 day | $2.51 | Get it → |
| 3GB for 15 days | 3 GB | 15 days | $3.31 | Get it → |
| 3GB for 30 days | 3 GB | 30 days | $3.40 | Get it → |
| 3GB per day | 3 GB | 1 day | $4.17 | Get it → |
| 5GB for 30 days | 5 GB | 30 days | $5.19 | Get it → |
| 10GB per day | 10 GB | 1 day | $6.62 | Get it → |
No app needed. Install by QR code before you fly, keep your own number for calls, and it connects the moment you land.
A commission on plans bought through these links is what pays for this guide. Nothing above depends on it: the places are chosen before any price is looked up.
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