The hook
The eroded remains of what was once among the largest cities in the world, a great Silk Road oasis reduced to walls, mounds, and a lone soaring mausoleum standing in the desert, after the Mongols destroyed it.
01Why it's worth it
Merv was a major oasis city on the Silk Road for well over a thousand years, and by the 12th century it had grown into one of the largest and richest cities on earth, a centre of learning and trade. Then in 1221 the Mongols sacked it and, by most accounts, slaughtered its population, a blow from which it never recovered. What remains today, spread across the desert near the modern town of Mary, is a haunting archaeological landscape of successive walled cities layered over centuries: crumbling ramparts, the great mud-brick "ice houses," and above all the beautifully preserved brick mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar, its dome still rising over the ruins. It takes imagination to picture the metropolis that stood here, and the emptiness and silence where a world city once thrummed are the very thing that makes it moving.
02How to experience it
Visit from the nearby town of Mary, ideally with a guide who can bring the layers of the vanished city to life, since much of what survives is low walls and mounds. See the Sultan Sanjar mausoleum and the old fortress walls. Go in the cooler months, and combine it with the wider Silk Road route through Turkmenistan.