Shahrisabz
— — the city the conqueror was born in and came back to.
Not only on a wall.
“A small city on the southern side of the Zerafshan range, eighty kilometres south of Samarkand by the high pass at Takhta-Karacha. Timur was born here in 1336 and intended it as his capital. The Ak-Saray palace gate still stands at roughly thirty-eight metres, broken at the top, blue tilework holding the colour. Apricot orchards line the road in. The mountains keep the heat off in summer.
Shahrisabz, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Shahrisabz lies in the Kashkadarya valley of southern Uzbekistan, eighty kilometres south of Samarkand across the Takhta-Karacha pass at roughly 1,700 metres. The city was founded as Kesh in pre-Islamic Sogdia and was the birthplace, in 1336, of Timur, the Turco-Mongol conqueror who made it the second capital of his empire. UNESCO inscribed the historic centre on the World Heritage List in 2000. The valley is sheltered, well-watered, and known for its apricots, almonds, and the long-stapled cotton that grew here under the Soviets.
The Ak-Saray palace, begun by Timur in 1380, originally stood about seventy metres tall; its two surviving entrance pylons reach roughly thirty-eight metres and frame what was once a fifty-metre archway, the largest in the medieval Islamic world. The Dor-ut Tilavat complex on the south side of town holds the tomb of Timur's father and the Kok Gumbaz Friday mosque of 1437, built by his grandson Ulugbek. The tilework is the cobalt and turquoise that the Timurid masters perfected at Samarkand.
Shahrisabz is reached by road from Samarkand, about two hours over the Takhta-Karacha pass, or four hours by car from Bukhara. The historic core was extensively cleared and rebuilt as a tourist plaza in 2014, a controversial restoration that placed the site on the World Heritage in Danger list until 2024. The main monuments are open daily with modest admission. Late spring and early autumn are mildest; summer afternoons regularly climb above thirty-five degrees and the valley turns dry.