SAMARKAND, UZBEKISTAN The Hub of the World City Network, Samarkand

Located in the middle of the Eurasian continent, Samarkand has served both as a place where Eastern and Western civilizations collide as well as a hub for their interaction. A variety of strata of the city, which have accumulated over 3,000 years along with the mixture of numerous cultures and races, show that the city’s role and function as a hub, although its owners may have changed numerous times, has been maintained as if it were a fate granted from the beginning.
The 7th century Afrasiab palace murals, discovered in 1965 during road construction on a hill northeast of Samarkand, suggest what Samarkand was like for thousands of years. In the murals, there are envoys from around the world who interacted with this region, including, surprisingly, Koreans from the Far East. The solid ramparts surrounding the palace and the city have separate gates that are connected to various parts of the world, such as the Kesh gate, the Naubechar gate, the Bukhara gate, and the China gate.
Samarkand was a city for cities that connected cities with cities and supplied civilizations and goods for them to grow. The exhibition offers a view of the hub city of Samarkand through the ruins of Afrasiab from the 7th century.