The Magoki-Attari Mosque sits below the level of today's street — over the centuries the city's cultural layer rose by nearly five meters, and a staircase now leads down to the building. That is exactly what makes it special: according to archaeologists, places of worship stood on this spot even before the Arab conquest, and the current 12th-century structure is considered one of the oldest surviving mosques in Central Asia. The southern portal is decorated with carved terracotta plant ornament, considerably older than the tiled facades typical of later Bukhara madrasahs. Today the building no longer functions as a mosque and houses a carpet museum, but precisely because it sits slightly off from the Toki Sarrafon market, it rarely sees tour groups — the atmosphere stays as quiet as it was originally intended.
