Old photos · Uzbekistan

Old photos of Samarkand

More than one photograph in ten is from the nineteenth century — the Registan, Bibi-Khanym and Gur-e-Amir from 1868 on, decades before their domes were restored.

7,730 photographs within 5 km of the centre · counted 12 October 2026

Time Portal's archive holds about 7,700 photographs of Samarkand (Samarqand), taken between 1866 and 2000, each pinned to the spot where the photographer stood. 66% of them date from 1955 or later and are free to browse at map.timeportal.app with no account; the older ones open with Pro. The oldest, dated 1866–1871 in the archive, shows the Rukhobod Mausoleum, with a madrasa and a mosque — a photograph from the Turkestan Album.

Photographs: 7,700
Oldest: 1866–1871
Busiest decade: 1970s
Free, 1955 on: 66%

Men in striped and flowered robes and white turbans gathered on the steps of a tiled madrasa portal on the Registan in Samarkand, photographed in colour in 1911 — On the Registan, 1911

How many photographs, decade by decade

The busiest decades for Samarkand are the 1970s and the 1980s — 1,595 and 1,500 photographs. 837 were taken before 1900. Everything from 1955 onward is free to open on the map; the older photographs are part of Pro.

Photographs of Samarkand in the Time Portal archive, within 5 km of the centre, by the year each was taken. Counted 12 October 2026.
Decade	Relative size	Photographs
before 1860		0
1860s		63
1870s		60
1880s		215
1890s		499
1900s		301
1910s		264
1920s		394
1930s		542
1940s		200
1950s		523
1960s		1,116
1970s		1,595
1980s		1,500
1990s		459

Where the photographs were taken

Counted in a small square around each place — about 200 metres each way — so a number is every photograph taken there, of the place itself or of the street beside it. Each place opens the map on that spot.

Place	Photos	Oldest
The Registan	2,448	1868–1871
The Bibi-Khanym Mosque	1,093	1868–1872
Gur-e-Amir	530	1870–1871
Shah-i-Zinda	1,153	1870
The Ulugh Beg Observatory	182	1908
Afrasiab	17	1906

What changed

Russian troops took Samarkand in 1868, and the archive's Samarkand begins in the same years: Timur's capital as the first Russian photographers found it, its mosques and madrasas cracked and half-ruined by centuries of earthquakes and neglect.

What has changed most since is the monuments themselves. Restoration began in the 1920s and has hardly stopped: a leaning minaret of the Ulugh Beg Madrasa on the Registan was straightened in 1932, and the Bibi-Khanym Mosque, much of which fell in an earthquake in 1897, was largely rebuilt from the 1970s.

The ruined portal arch and dome of the Bibi-Khanym Mosque and its smaller northern mosque above a snowy square in Samarkand in 1883 — The great and the small northern mosques of Bibi-Khanym, 1883

Donkey riders and people on foot on Yangi Rasta Street in Samarkand in the late 1920s, passing the tiled madrasas of the Registan, the Chorsu dome at the far end — Yangi Rasta Street, from the fortress towards the Chorsu dome, 1925–1928

Questions about old photos of Samarkand

Where can I see old photos of Samarkand on a map?

On Time Portal: about 7,700 photographs of Samarkand, each pinned where it was taken, most with the direction the camera faced. The map is free in any browser at map.timeportal.app — photographs from 1955 on need no account — and there is an app for iPhone and iPad.

What is the oldest photograph of Samarkand in the archive?

The oldest precisely dated photograph, from 1866–1871, shows the Rukhobod Mausoleum, with a madrasa and a mosque — a photograph from the Turkestan Album. 837 of the Samarkand photographs were taken before 1900.

Which years of Samarkand are best covered?

The 1970s, with 1,595 photographs, and the 1980s, with 1,500. 66% of the Samarkand photographs date from 1955 or later.

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The counts on this page are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 — credit Time Portal and link here. The photographs are not ours to license: they belong to their photographers and the archives that keep them.