Toprak Kala

North of the Amu Darya, in the Ellikqala district, the eroded walls of Toprak Kala rise above the flat land at the edge of the desert. In the first centuries AD this was one of the most important places in Khorezm, a kingdom of the lower Amu Darya that grew rich on irrigation agriculture and trade. Today it is one of the most visited of the desert fortresses of Khorezm, and the one that best shows what a royal city of the time looked like.

Toprak Kala was carefully planned. A rectangular wall with towers, roughly 500 by 350 metres, enclosed the town. A main street ran from the single gate in the south to the north, with blocks of houses arranged in a grid on either side. A temple, believed to be a fire temple, stood near the main street.

In the north-west corner, the palace rose on a massive platform of mud brick about 25 metres high, with three tall towers. It overlooked the whole city and the surrounding plain. Even in ruins, the platform and its walls are the most impressive part of the site.

The palace was excavated by the Khorezm expedition of Sergei Tolstov from the 1940s. It had more than a hundred rooms on several levels. Archaeologists gave some of the halls names after what they found: the Hall of Kings, with clay statues of rulers and their families; the Hall of Victories; the Hall of Dancing Masks, decorated with reliefs; and others with paintings of musicians, women and animals.

The wall paintings and sculptures of Toprak Kala are among the finest examples of ancient art in Central Asia. Most of the finds were taken to museums; some can be seen in the Savitsky Museum in Nukus, others in Tashkent and in the Hermitage in St Petersburg.

One of the most important discoveries at Toprak Kala was a collection of documents on wood and leather, written in the Khorezmian language in an Aramaic-derived script. They include lists of people and economic records, and they helped historians understand the society, administration and calendar of ancient Khorezm. Very few written sources from this period of Central Asian history survive, which makes this archive precious.

The palace seems to have been abandoned by the 4th century AD, perhaps when the capital moved elsewhere or the irrigation canals changed. The city was later used for a time and then left to the sand and wind. Over centuries, erosion shaped the mud-brick walls into the soft, rippled forms you see today.

Location: in the Ellikqala district of Karakalpakstan, about 1.5 hours by road from Khiva, close to Kyzyl Kala.

Tickets: an entrance fee may be charged.

Time needed: about 1 hour.

What to see: climb the ramp to the palace platform for the best view over the city walls and the grid of streets. Walk along the main street to the gate. Some walls have been partly restored; please do not climb on fragile ruins.

Tips: bring water and a hat; there is little shade. Go early or late in summer, when the low sun shows the rippled shapes of the walls best.

Toprak Kala is usually visited with Kyzyl Kala and Ayaz Kala on our desert fortresses day tour from Khiva, or on the way to Nukus, with a stop at Chilpik.