Ulugh Beg Observatory

The observatory was built in the 1420s by the grandson of Timur, Ulugh Beg, ruler of Samarkand and an astronomer. Of the round three-storey building its main part has survived, an underground trench with the marble arc of a giant sextant along which the altitude of the heavenly bodies was measured. The arc goes deep into the hill, the walls of the trench are laid in brick, and the scale of the instrument is plain from its steps. The star catalogue compiled here, covering more than a thousand bodies, remained the most accurate in the world for centuries and was later published in Oxford. A monument to Ulugh Beg stands beside the excavation against a mosaic panel of the starry sky, and a museum of his age works in the building next door. The place lies on the northern edge of Samarkand, by the hill of Chupan-Ata, away from the other monuments.

On the map