The Ishratkhana — 'house of joy' — was built in the 1460s by the wife of the Timurid ruler Abu Said as a mausoleum for their daughter. An earthquake in 1903 brought down the dome, and the building has been a roofless ruin ever since. Restoration work has stabilised the walls and recovered fragments of the interior frescoes, which are unusual in Timurid architecture for their figurative scenes.
It is the least visited of Samarkand's major monuments and worth the small detour for that reason alone. The brickwork on the surviving walls is among the finest in the city, and the open shell of the ruin gives a vertical sense of scale that the restored monuments hide. Easily reached on foot from the southern edge of the old town.