Afrasiab Museum
Afrasiab, northern Samarkand, Uzbekistan
Afrasiab Museum changes the perspective of a Samarkand visit by looking beyond the familiar Timurid monuments. Its celebrated seventh-century wall paintings belong to the city’s Sogdian past and show a world of envoys, gifts and cultural exchange. Their fragmentary condition makes patient interpretation worthwhile, rather than a hurried glance. Combine the museum with an understanding of the surrounding archaeological landscape, and the city becomes a much longer story than its best-known domes and tiled facades suggest.