City Walls

Pisé and mud-brick walls up to ten metres high enclose the old city, with a walkway along the western section

The walls of Itchan Kala enclose a rectangle 600 by 400 metres and rise up to ten metres in the best-preserved sections. They are pierced by four gates — Ata in the west, Polvon in the east, Bakhcha in the north, and Tash in the south — each with a fortified barbican and a high wooden door. The walkway along the top of the western wall is accessible during opening hours and gives the best appreciation of the wall's scale.

Walk the full perimeter outside the walls in about half an hour. The view from the western flank at sunset, with the silhouettes of the Kalta Minor and the Islam Khoja Minaret rising over the rampart, is one of the best photographic moments in Central Asia.

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Khiva's walls have been raised, repaired, and rebuilt in mud-brick and rammed earth for more than 1,500 years. The current course dates mostly from the 18th century, after a series of catastrophic Persian invasions. They are made of pakhsa — layered courses of compressed earth and straw — which weather quickly but can be patched indefinitely with the same material from the surrounding plain.

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