The world’s largest indoor Ferris wheel, at the Alem entertainment centre Arnau Rovira Vidal / Institute

Ashgabat, the capital of the central Asian nation of Turkmenistan, is notable for three architectural accomplishments. First, it holds the world record for the highest concentration of white marble-clad buildings – in 2013 (the last year for which official records are available), there were 543 in an area of 4.5m square metres. Second, the city has the highest number of fountain pools in a public space – the Ashgabat Fountain, which sits on the road from the airport to the city, includes 27 synchronised and fully-programmable fountains in an area of about 15ha. And third, there is the world’s largest indoor Ferris wheel – a 47.6m affair, at the Alem entertainment centre in the south of the city, that cost £57m to build.

The unique look of Ashgabat is partly due to president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow’s obsession with breaking records. Another factor is the legacy of post-Soviet leader Saparmurat Niyazov. During his 15-year reign, from 1990 to 2006, after independence from the Soviet Union, Niyazov reshaped the country in his own image: he rechristened months and weekdays to reference his life (April was named after his mother, Gurbansoltan); had golden statues made in his likeness; and covered any vestige of what had happened before his presidency under tonnes of marble.


Ashgabat's Wedding Palace has been compared to a "disco ball" enclosed in star shapes Arnau Rovira Vidal / Institute

“The Turkmen government has been on a reconstruction and beautification campaign since the 1990s,” says Rachel Denber, deputy director for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch. “They’ve demolished large swathes of the city to build monuments and high-rise buildings.” Families have been pushed to the outskirts, often into tiny apartments. Water supply is insecure. Turkmenistan is more than 70 per cent desert, and around 90 per cent of its water comes from a single source: the Amu Darya river. After extravagant fountains started springing up in Ashgabat’s public squares, the water was diverted to supply them, leaving households painfully underserved.

Read next Can digital forensics help us work out what happened at Grenfell? Can digital forensics help us work out what happened at Grenfell?

The building of Turkmenistan's Central Bank is adorned with a giant gilt coin balancing on the top Arnau Rovira Vidal / Institute

Turkmenistan is also home to the world’s largest reserve of natural gas, but amid fluctuations in global energy prices, Berdimuhamedow has been trying to rebrand the country as a tourist destination. This effort accelerated in 2010, when Ashgabat was picked to host the Asian Indoor Games of 2017. The government commissioned grandiose new monuments, renovated the city’s main stadium and built a village for the athletes. But with most of its citizens confined to the outskirts and tourist visas hard to obtain, Ashgabat’s buildings see very little footfall. A bird-shaped international airport, relaunched in 2016 after a £1.7bn makeover, was intended to handle 1,600 passengers per hour; it currently operates at 10 per cent of that. “It’s a foreboding landscape,” Denber says.


More great stories from WIRED

🐄 How our addiction to big beef ended up ruining the planet

👎 Google's Image search has a massive sexism problem

💰 Here's what Facebook, Google and Tesla pay staff in 2019


👽 The best science fiction books everyone should read

👍 Follow these essential tips to using Trello like a boss

📧 Never miss an awesome story again with our weekly WIRED Weekender newsletter