Before 1948, Ashgabat was just a small town in Soviet Turkmenistan in Central Asia. However, in the middle of the night, the city was rocked by a huge 7.3-magnitude earthquake, which flattened its buildings and buried around two-thirds of Ashgabat’s population under rubble.
However, the city did not sit in its destroyed state for very long. By the 1950s, leader Saparmurat Niyazov rolled out his “White City” urban renewal project, which still stands today, with 543 towering structures covered in expensive white marble. In fact, the city is so bright it acts like a giant mirror and boasts the highest concentration of such buildings in the world. However, today, Ashgabat has been dubbed the “city of the dead”, with hardly any residents walking its streets.
The marble buildings were not the only impressive structure constructed in Ashgabat. The Ashgabat Fountain complex, located between the city’s airport and centre, features 27 synchronised and programmable fountains within an area of around 15 hectares. It holds the record for the “Most Fountain Pools in a Public Place”.
Leader Niyazov also decided it was important for him to be immortalised, so he built a four-foot-tall gold statue of himself, perched on a 246-foot arch in the middle of the city. The statue actually spins, completing one turn every 24 hours. Its construction involved 20 pounds of nine kilos of gold paint and 45 tonnes of steel, and it is illuminated at night.
When Niyazov in 2006, his successor, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, not only continued but expanded the project. An impressive airport was constructed for an eyewatering £1.7 billion, shaped like a falcon with wings stretching 230 feet wide and capable of handling 14 million passengers a year. However, on average, only 100,000 people use the airport annually.
Ashgabat also boasts a three-acre ice arena with 10,300 seats, but it lies unused. They even built a £3.7 billion Olympic village complete with a 12,000-seat stadium, 10 pools and 20 practice fields—all for a country that had never won an Olympic medal until 2020.
One million people live in Ashgabat today, but the vast majority live in the suburbs. One major issue is that Leader Niyazov built the city with himself in mind, not its residents. He tore down thousands of old houses and replaced them with properties that locals could not afford to live in, with rents coming to thousands a month—in a city where most people only make around £370.
It’s not exactly clear why no one walks the streets. It could be due to strange rules, including one that states every car must be white, or due to the extreme weather systems where temperatures can exceed 40C in the summer.
Little money flows into the city from tourism, either. While Dubai received nearly 19 million visitors in 2024, on average, Ashgabat welcomes just 14,000. Obtaining a visa can be challenging, with most travel only possible through a guided tour. Very few places fly directly to Turkmenistan, so most visitors must catch a connecting flight in Istanbul.
There are two visa options: a transit visa, for when you might need to stop off in the country during a trip elsewhere, and a tourist visa, for which a Letter of Invitation from the Embassy must be secured. A visa will cost you between £40 and £118 and must be paid for in dollars.