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Rang

The sand-coloured holy city

Bukhara

An oasis city of pale brick, where patterned brickwork does the work of colour and blue domes are accents.

Kalon-Ensemble in Bukhara (Uzbekistan)
Photo: Euyasik, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why Bukhara is baked brick

Bukhara is an oasis city on the old Silk Road in Uzbekistan, long a centre of Islamic learning. Its historic core is the colour of the desert around it: pale, sandy baked brick. Builders made pattern from the brick itself. The 10th-century Samanid mausoleum is a small cube whose walls are woven like basketwork. The Kalyan minaret, completed in 1127, is ringed with bands of different brick designs. Blue arrives later and in small doses, in the turquoise domes of the Mir-i-Arab madrasa and the tiled gateways of the 16th and 17th centuries. In the covered bazaars traders sell suzani, cotton cloths embroidered with large red flowers.

Baked brick#C9A27ADome turquoise#2CA6A4Majolica blue#1F4E9ESuzani red#A8322D

Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.

Colours tied to Bukhara

TurquoiseA blue-green colour named after a prized mineral long used for gems and decorationPolish cochinealA crimson dye once vital to Poland, made from a native scale insect
About this page

Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Bukhara" on Wikipedia. If you know Bukhara and we have it wrong, tell us.

More colour cities

All colour cities
🇺🇿 City of blue domesSamarkandRibbed turquoise domes and tiled gateways in every shade of blue rise over an old Silk Road capital.🇺🇿 Mud walls and a turquoise towerKhivaA walled desert town where a short, fat minaret wrapped in blue-green tile stands over clay-coloured lanes.🇮🇳 Ruins among golden bouldersHampiThe ruined capital of Vijayanagara lies among heaps of ochre granite boulders and bright green paddy.🇮🇩 Home of court batikYogyakartaThe royal city of central Java, whose classic batik is drawn in brown, indigo and white.🇮🇷 The mud-brick desert cityYazdAn earth-coloured city of domes and wind towers in central Iran, with one tall gateway of blue tile.🇾🇪 The gingerbread citySana'aTower houses of brown brick, each window and floor outlined in white gypsum like icing.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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