Ashgabat is the capital and largest city of Turkmenistan. The city is located in a seismically active area, and therefore until the foundation of Ashkhabad there were sporadic settlements with yurts. With the Russian founding as a garrison town in 1881, the town was planned as a town with wide streets and low constructions, and at the turn of the 20th century, only the town museum had more than one floor.

However, there were already approximately 20,000 in the city at this time, since Ashgabat was strategically located on the trade routes of the region and the Trans-Caspian Railway had come to the city in 1885. Hotels, banks and many other institutions were also established and built in the city during this period.

In 1917, Soviet rule was established in Ashgabat, and after a period of counter-rebellion, communist rule was reinstated in 1919, when Ashgabat changed its name to Poltoratsk, after the revolutionary Pavel Poltoratsky, who was the first leader of the Turkmen Soviet state. In 1924, the city became the capital of the Turkmen Soviet Republic, and in 1927 it got its old name back.

The first major urban plan for Ashgabat was developed in Moscow in 1935–1937, and at the time there were still only a few tall buildings in the city. Most of the houses were built of adobe or burnt stone, and therefore practically all of Ashgabat was destroyed and many inhabitants lost their lives when an earthquake hit the city in 1948.

A new town plan was quickly developed after the earthquake, and reconstruction began quickly as well. During the following decades, Ashgabat was resurrected, not least in the style of brutalism during the Soviet era. Administration buildings, theaters and many other institutions were built in these decades.

After Turkmenistan’s independence from the Soviet Union, many of Ashgabat’s streets were renamed several times, and grandiose buildings were erected, many of which were made of marble. Over the past decades, many new residential areas have also been built, and today there are more than a million inhabitants in the Turkmen capital.