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Museum of Fine Arts
The pricey Museum of Fine Arts is located in an impressive building with a big rotunda, two tiers and lots of gold. The collection contains some great Soviet-Turkmen artwork: happy peasant scenes with a backdrop of yurts and smoke-belching factories. There is also a collection of R
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Lebap Regional Museum
Turkmenabats brand new and ridiculously ornate museum could double as Liberaces house (check out those chandeliers!), but it also houses a solid collection of archeological findings from the Lebap region and a good ethnographic display including a full reconstruction of a Silk Road
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Tolkuchka Bazaar
With its teeming cast of colourful thousands, this bazaar is Central Asia, Cecil B. De Mille-style. It sprawls across acres of desert on the outskirts of town, with corrals of camels and goats, avenues of red-clothed women squatting before silver jewellery, and countless trucks fro
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Mausoleum of Mohammed ibn Zeid
From the ticket office, continue east and take your first left (north) to an early-Islamic monument, the 12th-century Mausoleum of Mohammed ibn Zeid. Like the other Sufi shrines (Gozli-Ata and Kubra), this shrine is an important site for Sufi pilgrims.There’s confusion as to who is
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Statue of Lenin & Around
The statue of Lenin, in a small park off Azadi köçesi, is a charmingly incongruous assembly of a tiny Lenin on an enormous and very Central Asian plinth surrounded by fountains. Behind Vladimir Illych is the Magtymguly Theatre , where traditional Turkmen performances can be seen. A
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Museum of Turkmen Values
The Museum of Turkmen Values is a rather empty and overpriced look at traditional Turkmen clothing and jewellery. This is a popular spot for wedding groups to take photographs with a golden statue of the president, and the fountains are pleasant enough (a kind of totalitarian Water
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Konye
The simple Konye-Urgench Museum is housed in the early-20th-century Dash Medressa, just before the main mausoleum complex. It includes some ancient Arabic texts and a few interestingly labelled artefacts from Old Urgench (eg ‘blue polished eight-cornered thing’). Note the Christian
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Carpet Museum
The large, modern Carpet Museum has a vast white marble facade and high entrance fees, though these are worth paying if you’re interested in this most famous Turkmen handicraft. While there’s a limit to the number of rugs the average visitor can stand, the central exhibit, the worl
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Arch of Neutrality
Beyond the national museum is the President Hotel , some distance behind which youll see the Arch of Neutrality . Once the centrepiece of Niyazovs Ashgabat, it was erected to celebrate the Turkmen peoples unsurprisingly unanimous endorsement of Turkmenbashis policy of neutrality in
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Kyz Kala
These two crumbling 7th-century koshk (fortresses) outside the walls of Merv are interesting for their ‘petrified stockade’ walls, as writer Colin Thubron describes them, composed of ‘vast clay logs up-ended side by side’. They were constructed by the Sassanians in the 7th century
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Kugitang Nature Reserve
Kugitang is the most impressive and pristine of Turkmenistans nature reserves. Set up in 1986 to protect the Kugitang Mountain Range, its unique ecosystem and in particular the rare markhor mountain goat, it includes the nations highest peak, several huge canyons, rich forests, mou
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Nejameddin Kubra Mausoleum
The path past the Matkerim-Ishan Mausoleum leads to the Nejameddin Kubra Mausoleum on the left, and the Sultan Ali Mausoleum facing it across a shady little courtyard. Nejameddin Kubra (1145–1221) was a famous Khorezm Muslim teacher and poet who founded the Sufic Kubra order, with
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Gutlug Timur Minaret
Crossing the road from Turabeg Khanym Complex to the side of the minaret, the path through a modern cemetery and the 19th-century Sayid Ahmed Mausoleum leads to the Gutlug Timur Minaret, built in the 1320s. It’s the only surviving part of Old Urgench’s main mosque. Decorated with b
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Sultan Tekesh Mausoleum
Instantly recognisable by its conical turquoise dome, the Sultan Tekesh Mausoleum is one of Konye Urgenchs most beautiful monuments. Tekesh was the 12th-century Khorezmshah who made Khorezm great with conquests as far south as Khorasan (present-day northern Iran and northern Afghan
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Independence Park
The Altyn Asyr Shopping Centre , the curious pyramidical shopping centre at the northern end of Independence Park, is reputedly the biggest fountain in the world. Inside it’s rather less than impressive – an all but empty two-floor shopping centre, although there’s a restaurant on
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National Museum
Looking like a lost palace in the urban desert, the National Museum occupies a striking position in front of the Kopet Dag . It’s actually a collection of three pricey museums – the History Museum , the Nature & Ethnographic Museum and the Presidential Museum . The History Muse
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Yangykala Canyon
With bands of pink, red and yellow rock searing across the sides of steep canyon walls, Yangykala is a breathtaking sight and one of the most spectacular natural attractions in Turkmenistan. Just as alluring as the beautiful views is its solitary isolation in the desert; few Turkme
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Mary Regional Museum
Marys highlight is this excellent museum housed in a sparkling white-marble palace across the river from the centre of town. The enormous premises is home to a collection of taxidermy, temporary exhibits and a gallery of Turkmen art, but the real reason to visit is the superb archa
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Independence Square
At the centre of Ashgabat is the enormous Independence Square, on which sits the golden-domed Palace of Turkmenbashi (the place of work of the former president), the Ministry of Fairness , the Ministry of Defence and the Ruhyyet Palace , all of which were built by the French corpor
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Turabeg Khanym Complex
Turabeg Khanym Complex, opposite the ticket office, is still the subject of some debate. Locals and some scholars consider this a mausoleum, though no-one is too sure who is buried here. Some archaeologists contend that it was a throne room built in the 12th century (it appears to
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