Itchan Kala, the walled inner town of Khiva, was the first place in Uzbekistan ever added to the UNESCO World Heritage List, recognized in 1990 as the best-preserved Silk Road city in Central Asia. Behind nearly two kilometers of mudbrick ramparts — their foundations laid around the 10th century, their present crenellated walls raised in the late 17th — some fifty monuments and 250 old houses crowd into just 26 hectares. This was the last caravan halt before the desert crossing toward Persia, a Khorezm oasis that grew rich as a trading and, until 1873, slave-trading capital of the Khanate of Khiva. The density is the whole point: minarets, madrasas, mosques and a royal citadel are packed so tightly you can walk the length of the town in about twenty minutes.
Walking Itchan Kala means constantly looking up. At the town's heart the squat, unfinished Kalta Minor — begun in 1851 and abandoned at 29 meters when its khan was killed in battle — rises in fat bands of turquoise and cobalt majolica, while the 57-meter Islam Khoja minaret, the tallest thing for miles, can still be climbed by a steep, unlit stair. Sand-colored lanes give way without warning to courtyards tiled floor-to-ceiling in blue, and the 213 carved wooden columns of the Juma Mosque hold up their roof in the dim light of a few skylights, much as they have for centuries. Much of this was heavily restored in the Soviet era, and by day the town can feel like a polished open-air museum thick with tour groups. But most day-trippers leave by early evening, and the hour after they go — walls glowing amber, lanes emptying, lit minarets almost to yourself — is when the old caravan city feels real again.