Urgench

About the city

Urgench lies on the Shovot canal some 6 km west of the Amu Darya and had 157,900 inhabitants at the start of 2026. It should not be confused with ancient Konye-Urgench (Gurganj) in Turkmenistan: after the river shifted its course, some of the old capital’s people resettled here, and New Urgench grew up as a trading post of the Khiva Khanate. It has been called Urgench since 1929 and has been the regional capital since 1938 — today a city of wide streets, Soviet-era blocks and new housing districts.

It is the transport hub for Khiva, about 30 km away, with an international airport and trains to Tashkent and beyond. Since 1997 a trolleybus line has linked Urgench and Khiva, a rare intercity route for Central Asia.

What to see

Near the airport stands the al-Khwarizmi memorial complex. In 1979 Donald Knuth and Andrei Ershov organised an international symposium here marking 1,100 years of the word “algorithm”, and the foundation stone of the scholar’s monument was laid on its opening day. The city celebrated the 800th anniversary of Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu in 1999 and the 2,700th of the Avesta in 2001, both commemorated with monuments, while the Contemporary Art Museum of Uzbekistan, in the first post office of 1910, makes a good counterpoint to Khiva’s antiquities.