Spend a pleasant night at the Hotel Grand Samarkand when you travel to the Uzbekistan city called The Pearl of the East. This Samarkand hotel has an excellent location in the heart of the city’s business and commercial district. The Hotel Grand Samarkand is modern 3 star hotel with a young, friendly, and highly trained staff. Within the hotel is an inner courtyard and a traditional ayvan, or verandah, where you can drink green tea or order a cocktail. The formal restaurant, serving both national and European-style dishes, has a unique centerpiece—an antique piano, built in 1818 for Princess Anna, where sometimes performers provide live music. The staff of the hotel offers car rental, shuttle service, laundry service, city guides, and 24 hour room service. Historically, Samarkand was known for its key location on the Silk Road between China and the West, and for being an important centre of Islamic scholarship. In 2001 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List as Samarkand – Crossroads of Cultures. The ancient centre of the city was the Registan, a square bordered on 3 sides by madrasahs, an Arabic term for educational institutions. There you can see the Ulugh Beg Madrasah, once a centre for the study of secular science; the Sher-Dor Madrasah (sometimes called the Lions Gate); and the gilded Tilya-Kori Madrasah. Other highlights of Samarkand tourism are the mausoleum of Shaybanids, the Chorsu trading dome, and the Bibi-Khanym Mosque.