24.08.22.
President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev took part in the opening ceremony of the Great Silk Road International Tourist Center in Samarkand the day before, the correspondent of the Kabar agency reports from the venue of the events.
President Shavkat Mirziyoyev made a speech and congratulated everyone on this joyful event. According to him, the city of Samarkand is the foundation of the Uzbek national statehood and has played an important role in the formation and development of two Renaissance in history. "This wonderful center is a continuation of the architectural traditions founded by our great ancestors. I am sure that it will become a symbolic bridge between our glorious history and the Third Renaissance, the foundation of which we are currently forming. The Great Silk Road complex is the gates of Uzbekistan that are wide open to the world," he said.
The multidisciplinary center includes 8 modern hotels, a congress hall, the Eternal City complex, an amphitheater and many other facilities. There is an old market, 40 craft workshops in the traditions of all regions of the country. In them, artisans will conduct workshops on wood carving, pottery, silk paper, jewelry and carpet weaving in front of their eyes.
The new tourist center is able to serve 2 million tourists a year. It will play an important role in increasing the number of foreign tourists coming to Samarkand to more than 1.5 million people in the coming years. Uzbekistan intends to increase the number of tourists coming to the country from the current 2 million to 9 million in the next five years; the number of people employed in the tourism sector will exceed 500 thousand people.
Recall that in 2019, at the initiative of Shavkat Mirziyoyev, a very ambitious project began – the construction of a huge complex on an area of 212 hectares along the rowing canal in the Samarkand district. An international team of experienced architects and engineers was involved, and a deeply thought-out project was developed. Together with domestic qualified builders, experienced specialists from China, Turkey, Great Britain, Italy took part in the work.
