Osh

Osh is the second-largest city in Kyrgyzstan, in the Fergana Valley in the country's south, with a population of 454,858 as of March 2024. UNESCO estimates the city to be more than 3,000 years old, the oldest in Kyrgyzstan, and its bazaar is said to have operated on the same site for roughly 2,000 years as a stop on the Silk Road; Sulayman Mountain, a World Heritage Site within the city, is thought by some researchers to be the "Stone Tower" the ancient geographer Ptolemy described as the midpoint of the Silk Road. The city's ethnically diverse population of Kyrgyz, Uzbeks and others has also seen serious ethnic violence, including riots in 1990 and unrest in 2010 that destroyed more than 2,000 buildings, and its economy has struggled since independence because its location near the Uzbekistan border cut it off from much of its former trading hinterland.