Can tourists enter Kalta Minor Minaret?

Tourists can’t enter or climb the Kalta Minor Minaret in Khiva. There’s no public internal stairway you can reach, and the place works mainly as an outside visual signal; that’s it, really.

It was commissioned by Mohammed Amin Khan in 1851, and he wanted the minaret to be tall enough so you could see all the way to Bukhara. Yet the work stopped abruptly when the Khan was killed in battle, so the eye-catching turquoise-tiled tower stayed incomplete at only 29 metres. Nowadays, visitors only get to gaze at the intensely detailed glazed majolica shell from the nearby square.