Uznews.net – Music contests, celebrity parties, concerts and discos regularly held on Samarkand’s Registan Square destroy the old buildings, say local architects.

All these events on Registan have become customary for local people who could not picture a few years ago that Registan would be hosting concerts and discos where alcohol flows.

This was impossible to imagine because Registan is an ensemble of 400-600-year-old beautiful mediaeval madrasahs which were not designed for entertainment.

The three madrasahs – Ulugbek, Tilla-Kori and Sher-Dor – were built in different times. The Ulugbek Madrasah was built on the orders of Tamerlane’s grandchild Ulugbek, a ruler and astronomer, in 1420.

The two other madrasahs were built two centuries later – Sher-Dor in 1619-1636 and Tilla-Kori in 1647-1660.

The madrasahs stopped their work when the Soviet government was established in Samarkand in the early 20th century and were turned into architectural sites that attracted tourists from all over the world.

One of the first entertainment events on Registan was the international music contest Shark Taronalari (Tunes of the East) which was held in 1999 and attended by President Islam Karimov.

Now, Registan also hosts Fashion Week organised by Karimov’s daughter Gulnara Karimova, who invited Rod Stewart and Julio Iglesias to sing there last autumn.

Conservationist of architecture from Samarkand Kahramon Hasanov says that loud music started destroying old walls of the madrasahs because they do not withstand sound above 15 decibels.

Specialists say that it is hard to protect the buildings in these conditions, which is why they should be conserved and maintained in their present state before they are fully destroyed.

They think that concerts should be held in halls, while discos in clubs and stadiums, so Registan is preserved for future generations.

Samarkand is expected to host the fifth Shark Taronalari festival in summer 2009, but will it be possible to move it to a concert hall?