The Silk Road was one of the roads most legendary in the history of mankind. The term coined by Ferdinand von Richtofen in 1877, Thomas O. Hollmann was the one who placed the entire region into nine zones: the valley of the Wei, the corridor Hexe, the Gobi, the Makler Takla, the mountains of the Pamir Knot, turiana depression, the Iranian plateau, Mesopotamia and the Syrian desert.

However, many centuries earlier in the year 138 AD Zhang Qian who was informed of the 36 kingdoms that made up that road, even then only cultural, discovering in his writings as a Samarkand their nerve centers and one of the most 2.500 years old for their existence.

The use of silk has been awarded, historically nobles and emperors who fought to keep secret the design of it. In Ancient China was so important to its economy even came to enact the death penalty for those who reveal their secret. When a princess betrayed the Empire, and selling it years later in the year 536, two monks succeeded at last bring silkworm eggs Hidden in bamboo from China to Byzantium, the one route that centuries before discovery Zhang Qian was became a crossroads not only cultural but also economic and trade, making all those kingdoms flourish and Samarkand was one of those.

Afrasiab Samarkand stood on a hill north of the present site in what is now Uzbekistan. From there grew to occupy it fully, but the invasion of Mughal kill much of the older works of this beautiful city. The year was 1218, both Bukhara and Samarkand were razed and looted and massacred its people harshly.

The city had to get up again in an almost full, and began to create Afrasiab the Shaji-Zinda necropolis. Tamerlane, the founder of the Timurid Empire, was the most important character in the recent history of Samarkand. Cemetery mausoleums that hosted some of the relatives of Tamerlane, and then began to be built within the other great architectural works.

From the time of Ulug-Bek, early fifteenth century, dating back to a simple home in the vicinity of the hill, and another mausoleum. The whole of this mausoleum, along with those of Tamerlane, was a beautiful view of portico and polychrome buildings, covered in mosaics and Escayola. The passageway that connects leads to another beautiful patio surrounded the Mausoleum of Tuman-aka and other tombs from the time of Timur Lenk is Reguistan Square.

The most famous gate of Samarkand, was built in the years 1404-05 carved in wood and ivory, and she enters the mosque in the fifteenth century and the Mausoleum of Kusama ibn-Abbas, the oldest of all, the first all future road construction.

The third side of the famous yard is made up of the Gur-Emir Mausoleum, one of the last built in the era Tamerlan precisely where the tomb of Timur the Lame. Although in the following period, the Ulug-Bek, other buildings were built, were of the era that gave Tamerlan the brightness necessary to Samarkand to know as we know it today despite the passage of years.

The new town was built during the era of Russian domination, and has no more charm than that of seeing tall buildings and wide avenues, hotels and shopping malls …

But against that modernity is always Samarkand, the city of legends, tales of the East, its history linked to Genghis Khan and Tamerlane to Major, to trade in the East and the Silk Road …