Current Time in Bukhara, Uzbekistan

Bukhara lies in south-western Uzbekistan, on the edge of the Kyzylkum desert in the oasis watered by the Zarafshan River. For more than two thousand years this oasis has been an island of gardens, canals and mulberry trees in an ocean of sand, and the city that grew there became one of the most celebrated stops on the Silk Road. Its historic centre is remarkably complete, and the whole of it has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

About three hundred thousand people live in Bukhara today, which serves as the capital of its province and as a centre of tourism, crafts, cotton processing, textiles, karakul wool and light industry. Natural gas fields nearby and a large oil refinery add to the regional economy, but the city's global importance rests above all on its heritage and on the visitors it attracts from every continent.

Founded well before the common era, Bukhara flourished under the Samanid dynasty in the ninth and tenth centuries, when it became the capital of a brilliant Persian-speaking state and one of the intellectual capitals of the Islamic world. The physician and philosopher Ibn Sina, known in Europe as Avicenna, studied in its libraries, and the scholar Imam al-Bukhari, compiler of one of the most respected collections of prophetic traditions, took his name from the city. Genghis Khan sacked it in 1220, yet it recovered under the Timurids and Shaybanids and later became the seat of the Emirate of Bukhara, an independent state that survived until the Russian conquest and the revolution of 1920.

The monuments are extraordinary. The Samanid Mausoleum, a small cube of intricately patterned brickwork more than a thousand years old, is among the finest early Islamic buildings anywhere. The Kalyan Minaret, completed in 1127 and so beautiful that Genghis Khan is said to have spared it, towers above the Poi Kalyan square with its great mosque and the Mir-i-Arab madrasa. The Ark, a massive earthen fortress, was the residence of the emirs, and the Lyab-i Hauz square with its ancient pool and mulberry trees is the social heart of the old town. Covered trading domes that once specialised in jewellery, hats and money changing still shelter craft workshops, and the quirky four-towered Chor Minor stands in a quiet lane nearby.

Bukhara has a rich craft tradition of gold embroidery, suzani needlework, carpets, miniature painting, ceramics and forged knives. Its cuisine features plov, samsa, shashlik and green tea, often served on wooden platforms in shaded courtyards. The city was also home for centuries to a distinctive Bukharan Jewish community and to the Naqshbandi Sufi order, whose founder is buried in a shrine just outside the city that remains a place of pilgrimage.

Trains, including fast services from Samarkand and Tashkent, an airport and good roads make access easy, and pedestrian streets link the main sites.

Bukhara is one of the great historic cities of Central Asia and a highlight of any journey along the Silk Road.