Rising above the white mass of buildings, a statue of a horse stands over 40 metres tall. It marks the Olympic Stadium built for the 2017 Asian Games. 

In 2013, Ashgabat was entered into the Guinness Book of Records as the city with the largest number of white marble buildings in the world, totalling 543 structures with a combined surface area of 4,514 million square metres.

This is the result of the vision of its two successive presidents, Saparmurat Niyazov (who died in 2006) and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. The latter also wrote a book entitled ‘Ashgabat, the White City’ to mark the 140th anniversary of the city’s founding.

Credit: Cornelia Steinigen (Germany)

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