Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Khiva - Uzbekistan

Khiva is a city of approximately 50,000 people located in the northwest of Uzbekistan. I've got this card because the the walled inner town of the city, Itchan Kala, was one of my Unesco missing sites. Itchan Kala was the first site in Uzbekistan to be inscribed in the World Heritage List (1990). The card was sent by Christa.

The old town retains more than 50 historic monuments and 250 old houses, dating primarily from the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries. Djuma Mosque, for instance, was established in the tenth century and rebuilt from 1788 to 1789, although its celebrated hypostyle hall still retains 112 columns taken from ancient structures.
The most spectacular features of Itchan Kala are its crenellated brick walls and four gates at each side of the rectangular fortress. Although the foundations are believed to have been laid in the tenth century, present-day 10-meters-high walls were erected mostly in the late seventeenth century and later repaired. - in: wikipedia
The card shows the Medresseh of Alla-Kuli, built in 1835 in an awkward space near the east gate of the inner town, is a celebrated example of harmonious blending into an ancient urban fabric.

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