Architecture & Ambition: Turkmenistan’s Bold Marble Capital

Since breaking from the USSR, Turkmenistan has worked to erase its Soviet past and build a new identity—one defined by architectural spectacle. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the capital, Ashgabat.

Over the past decade, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, officially titled “Distinguished Architect of Turkmenistan,” has led a dramatic overhaul of the city. Historic monuments have been torn down, thousands of buildings razed, and in their place, vast white marble stadiums, towering monuments, and modern citadels have risen—unlike anything seen in the West.

Ashgabat now holds the world record for the highest concentration of white marble-clad buildings: 543 new structures covering 4.5 million square meters. In a country where over 70% of the land is desert, water has been diverted from the Amu Darya River to keep the city’s fountains running.

This obsession with grandeur extends to the Alem Entertainment Center, which made it into the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest enclosed Ferris wheel—built for $90 million. Ashgabat’s Wedding Palace registers up to seven couples at a time. It has three ceremony halls, seven banquet halls, and a dedicated room where newlyweds are required to pose in front of the President’s portrait.

For the 2017 Asian Indoor Games, the government built an entire athlete village from scratch and revamped the city’s main stadium. The Ashgabat Olympic Stadium is now topped with a 600-ton white marble horse head—an homage to the Akhal-Teke, Turkmenistan’s prized horse breed. President Berdimuhamedow has even written poems and songs about it.

Turkmenistan isn’t just replacing its Soviet legacy; it’s building a carefully curated new national image. Spanish photographer, Arnau Rovira Vidal’s original photographs of this unique city are available on his website.