Perhaps, the most interesting place in Urgut is Chor-Chinor (‘four plane trees’). In truth, there are forty gigantic plane trees (oriental planes) growing on the site, not four. The oldest of them is 1,100 years old, its trunk is 10 m in circumference and the hollow in it can shelter 10 adult persons. According to legend, four of the trees were planted by Arab military leader and sheikh Khoja Abu Talib Sarmast in the 9th century, as the Arabs had conquered Central Asia. He then became the ruler of Urgut and later was buried under the trees. This spot became a cultic place and afterwards a mausoleum was constructed over the grave and a madrasah and mosque were built near it.
Ruins of a 9th-century Nestorian church were excavated 2 km from Chor-Minor.
The largest bazaar in Samarkand province is situated at the entrance to the town of Urgut. Among the goods offered at the bazaar you can find antique carpets, manually embroidered tapestries (suzani), leather footwear, jewellery, artistic metal items, ceramic tableware, beautiful wooden boxes and others.
Urgut boasts a unique workshop owned by the Oblakulov family, 17 generations of which have been making ceramic articles there. The secrets of producing the traditional Urgut ceramics characterised by yellowish-golden and pale lemon shades have been passed from generation to generation. At the artisans’ house you can acquaint yourselves with the ancient ceramics production technology and the traditional suzani tapestries painted with natural pigments and embroidered with golden threads.
Tourists will surely enjoy the traditional food bazaar in the centre of the town, where farmers and craftsmen trade in the products grown and made with their own hands, and the Sunday livestock market, where people buy and sell sheep, goats, cows, horses, hens and other domestic animals.
The area around Urgut is very beautiful. The town is dominated by the Kyrktau Plateau (‘kyrktau’ translates from Turkic as ‘forty mountains’) with over 100 caves, including the famous Kiyevskaya (KILSI) cave 990 m deep featuring a series of vertical shafts up to 90 m in depth each and a subterranean lake.
Close to the M39 Highway connecting Samarkand with Shakhrisabz, some 20 km from Urgut, not far from the Karatepe Reservoir, there is a plateau covered all over with huge granite boulders and rocks of fantastic shapes. The best known of them is The Heart situated right at the roadside.
A picturesque artificial pine grove can be seen at the village of Amankutan, a little below the Takhtakaracha Pass. Some of the pine trees were planted more than 100 years ago by the Russian government, when the region was a part of the Russian Empire.
