The Ambassadors of Samarkand: What French Archaeologists Found Under a Road

In 1965 a road crew was cutting a track across a dusty mound on the edge of Samarkand when their machines hit a wall. Behind it, buried under thirteen centuries of earth, was a room painted from floor to ceiling. Ambassadors ride in procession across the western wall — envoys from China, from Korea, from Tibet, from Persia — escorted by Turkic soldiers, carrying silk and gifts toward an enthroned Sogdian ruler. The paint is mid-seventh century. It is the oldest surviving picture of the Silk Road behaving exactly as the Silk Road was supposed to behave.

They are called the Afrasiab murals, or simply the Paintings of the Ambassadors. You can stand in front of them tomorrow, in a quiet museum on the edge of modern Samarkand, and almost nobody else will be in the room with you.

Afrasiab: the Samarkand that came before Samarkand

The mound is what is left of pre-Mongol Samarkand — the city Alexander knew as Maracanda and the Sogdians ran as the trading capital of Central Asia, until Genghis Khan ended it in 1220. Today Afrasiab is a huge grassy plateau of ridges and hollows above the modern city, with the Afrasiyab Museum at its edge holding the murals, the ossuaries, the coins and the ceramics pulled out of it.

Most visitors to Samarkand see the Registan, photograph Shah-i-Zinda, and leave. Afrasiab is a fifteen-minute drive from the Registan and it is where the story actually starts. Go there first, and everything Timur built afterwards makes a different kind of sense.

Pourquoi l’Ouzbekistan? Because French archaeologists never left

Since 1989 a Franco-Uzbek archaeological mission has been working this ground: the MAFOuz de Sogdiane, run on the French side from the CNRS and the EPHE by Frantz Grenet and later Claude Rapin, and on the Uzbek side from the Institute of Archaeology in Samarkand. Their remit is the ancient country of Sogdiana, between the Amu Darya and the Gates of Tamerlane, and their trenches have run from Afrasiab itself to Koktepe and out across the Zerafshan and Kashkadarya valleys.

That is more than thirty-five consecutive seasons of French scholarship in one Uzbek valley. It is why so much of what the world knows about Sogdian art, religion and trade was published first in French — and why a French traveller arriving in Samarkand is walking into a conversation their own country has been part of for a generation.

The autumn the Louvre brought Samarkand to Paris

From 23 November 2022 to 6 March 2023 the Louvre staged Splendeurs des oasis d’Ouzbekistan: nearly 130 works, many leaving Uzbekistan for the first time. Monumental wall paintings from the Ambassadors’ Hall at Afrasiab travelled to Paris. So did Bactrian gold, pages from one of the oldest monumental Korans of the early Islamic period, and miniatures from the sixteenth-century Bukhara school. Hundreds of thousands of French visitors met Uzbekistan on the banks of the Seine.

The obvious next step is the reverse journey. Everything in that exhibition came from somewhere, and the somewhere is a country you can enter without a visa.

Voyage en Ouzbekistan: no visa, high-speed trains, perfect autumn

French citizens travel visa-free to Uzbekistan for stays of up to 30 days. Paris connects to Tashkent with one stop through Istanbul or the Gulf, and from August 2026 a new Etihad and Uzbekistan Airways codeshare places Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, Nukus, Termez and the Fergana Valley on a single ticket.

Once you are in, the Afrosiyob high-speed train runs Tashkent to Samarkand in 2 hours 8 minutes at 230 km/h, and since 2026 the high-speed network extends to Khiva. Autumn — September through November — is the season to do it: 22 to 28°C by day, dry air, cool evenings, and bazaars piled with melons, grapes, pomegranates and figs. The summer heat that pushes Bukhara and Khiva past 40°C in July and August is gone.

How we would build it

An archaeology-minded route runs Tashkent, then Samarkand with a full morning at Afrasiab and the Ulugbek observatory before the Timurid monuments; Shahrisabz over the pass; Bukhara for the old town, the Ark and the Sufi shrines; and Khiva inside its walls. Add Termez in the far south for the Buddhist monasteries of the pre-Islamic Silk Road, or Nukus for the Savitsky collection, and you have a fortnight that no standard European group tour offers.

GoUzbekistan is the brand of Lochin Express Plyus LLC, a licensed Uzbek tour operator at Islam Karimov Street 21 in Bukhara, active in tourism since 2007, holding tour-operator licence No. 662280 issued by the Committee for Tourism Development of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Our founder and CEO is Nusratullo Naimov. We are the ground operator, not a reseller, which is why we can put a genuine archaeologist or an art historian in the car with you instead of a script.

Ready to meet the ambassadors? Send us your dates and your interests and we will build the itinerary around them — create your own custom tour, or explore our tours. French-speaking guides can be arranged on request: info@gouzbekistan.com, +998 93 963-00-00.

Plan your Uzbekistan trip — in your language

العربية

السياحة في أوزبكستان تعني سمرقند وبخارى وخيوة على طريق الحرير، بقباب فيروزية ومدارس من القرن الخامس عشر. الخريف هو أجمل موسم: طقس معتدل وأسواق مليئة بالفواكه. صمّم رحلتك الخاصة مع فريقنا المحلي في بخارى عبر إنشاء رحلتك الخاصة أو تصفّح جولاتنا الجاهزة.

Deutsch

Eine Usbekistan Reise fuehrt Sie auf der Seidenstrasse von Samarkand ueber Buchara bis Chiwa – visumfrei, sicher und im Herbst bei angenehmen Temperaturen. Unsere Seidenstrasse Rundreise wird individuell fuer Sie gebaut, mit deutschsprachiger Reiseleitung auf Wunsch. Jetzt Ihre Reise individuell planen oder unsere Rundreisen entdecken.

Espanol

Los viajes a Uzbekistan recorren la Ruta de la Seda entre Samarcanda, Bujara y Jiva, con cupulas turquesa y madrasas del siglo XV. Los espanoles no necesitan visado para estancias de hasta 30 dias y el otono ofrece el mejor clima del ano. Disena tu viaje a medida o descubre nuestros circuitos.

Francais

Un voyage en Ouzbekistan, c est la Route de la Soie en vrai : Samarcande, Boukhara et Khiva, sans visa pour les Francais jusqu a 30 jours. L automne est la plus belle saison, avec des journees douces et des bazars debordant de fruits. Creez votre circuit sur mesure ou parcourez nos voyages.

中文

乌兹别克斯坦旅游就是重走丝绸之路：撒马尔罕的雷吉斯坦广场、布哈拉的古城和希瓦的城墙，秋季气候宜人，最适合出行。我们是位于布哈拉的持牌地接社，可为您量身定制行程。欢迎定制您的专属线路或浏览我们的经典行程。

Русский

Туры в Узбекистан — это Шёлковый путь целиком: Самарканд, Бухара и Хива, бирюзовые купола и медресе XV века. Осень — лучший сезон: мягкая погода и базары, полные фруктов. Мы лицензированный туроператор в Бухаре и собираем маршрут под вас. Составить свой тур или посмотреть готовые туры.