100 Places To See In Your Lifetime-Heaven On Earth#95-Registan Square,Uzbekistan-"Samarkand is an old city in Uzbekistan, a central-Asian nation that broke free from the U.S.S.R. in 1991. What Lord George Curzon, then viceroy of India, said in 1899 maintains: "The Registan of Samarkand was originally, and is still in its ruin, the noblest public square in the world. I know of nothing in the East approaching it in massive simplicity and grandeur and nothing in Europe...which can even aspire to enter the competition."