Herat

Herat was the capital of the Timurid renaissance under Queen Gawhar Shad and its painters and calligraphers set the standard for Persian miniature for a century. The Friday Mosque covers a hectare and its whole facade is glazed tilework, remade by a workshop on the site that has never stopped. Five of the twenty minarets of the Musalla complex still stand in a field, braced with steel cables, after the British-backed Amir razed the rest in 1885 to deny the Russians a base. The citadel of Alexander is rebuilt on its mound above the old bazaars. The city sits sixty-five kilometres from the Iranian border and has always traded that way.