Ulugh Beg, the Timurid ruler and astronomer, built this observatory in the 1420s with scholar Jamshid al-Kashi helping design it. Its centrepiece was the Fakhri sextant, a trench-mounted instrument with a 40-metre radius – the largest of its kind at the time – which let Ulugh Beg's team measure the length of the solar year and catalogue stars more precisely than Copernicus or Tycho Brahe would manage more than a century later.
The observatory was destroyed in 1449 and only rediscovered in 1908; what you see today is the underground remnant of the sextant trench plus an adjoining museum on Ulugh Beg's astronomy.
Local tip: It sits on the north-eastern edge of the city, further out than the Registan-area sites, so budget separate travel time.
Good to know
- Where: Toshkent yo'li, Samarkand
- City: Samarkand
Plan your visit to Samarkand