Bibi-Khanym Mosque vs Po-i-Kalan (Kalan Mosque and Minaret)
Two temples in Uzbekistan. Bibi-Khanym Mosque has no online ticket listed; Po-i-Kalan (Kalan Mosque and Minaret) has no online ticket listed. The table and the two notes below put them side by side; the full pages have what to see, the ticket and the timing for each.
No online ticket is sold for Bibi-Khanym Mosque on its own. Entry works the simple way: you pay a modest fee at the gate on Tashkent Street, where foreign visitors are charged more than Uzbek citizens, and you can walk in whenever the site is open. A small extra charge is sometimes asked for photography or for a guide who waits at the entrance; settle the price before he starts talking.
Most visitors see the mosque as one stop on a walking tour of central Samarkand. The usual route starts at the Registan, follows the pedestrian street north-east for about ten minutes to Bibi-Khanym, crosses to the Siab Bazaar for dried fruit and bread, and continues uphill to the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis.
There is no online ticket for Po-i-Kalan, and none is needed. The square between the Kalan Mosque and the Mir-i-Arab Madrasah is a public space you can cross at any time, and the Kalan Minaret is admired from the ground. To enter the mosque courtyard, foreigners pay a small fee at the gate on the square, payable in Uzbek som; the madrasah is still a working Islamic school, so visitors may usually look only into its entrance hall and through the grilles.
The complex stands at the heart of old Bukhara, a short walk from the Lyabi-Hauz pool, the trading domes and the Ark fortress, so most people simply walk there from their hotel in the old town.
