Travel Guide Achgabat

We will come to Ashgabad for its monumentaliste architecture of white marble, a little surreal in the middle of the desert, and for its museums, especially the National Museum, which presents beautiful pieces from different excavations in the country. The Bazar bazaar, at the exit of the city, deserves a detour. The whole country seems to be meeting on Sunday morning. It is the largest and probably most picturesque bazaar in Central Asia.It is impossible to forget the colossal monuments erected in its glory to the glory of Turkmenbashi: Neutrality Tower, presidential palace, Ruhnama monument, various portraits and statues.HistoryTurkmenistan was originally populated by nomadic tribes. The appearance of cities was thus relatively late, and strongly linked to the implantation of the Russians and then the Soviets in the country. The fight against nomadisation resulting in forced sedentary of populations. Ashgabad was developed only at the end of the th century by Russian settlers who were the majority inhabitants.The city prospered thanks to the railway which was a crossing between the Caspian and the eastern part of Central Asia. But on October 6, 1948, an earthquake reaching the ninth degree of the Richter scale completely razed the city. It is estimated that over 100 000 people, two thirds of the population, perished in the minute that this terrible earthquake lasted. Among the survivors: the former president, "Turkmenbashi", who saw a divine sign and made it one of the great features of the cult of his personality.The zone was immediately closed to foreigners, for five years, the time for the Stalinist regime to hide the aftermath of the disaster. A city in the purest Soviet style has been rebuilt a little in haste: the bars of all similar and now largely décrépies buildings are still visible at the periphery of the city.Ashgabad came out of his Soviet torpor only with the independence of Turkmenistan. The capital then became the playground of the Turkmen President, who decided to make it a showcase for the world and an ode to his own person. The rope-carved avenues are now adorned with white marble palaces for the ministries, museums and theatres of this new city. The waves of fountains resonate in the huge parks of this capital born in the middle of the desert. All over the world, statues and portraits of Turkmenbashi look after a population that seems very few in the midst of these monumental perspectives…