Oguzkent Hotel

Ashgabat is a city of white marble by decree, and the Oguzkent is its hotel flagship: an enormous crystalline slab designed by French architects and opened in 2011 under Sofitel management, now operated by the state. It remains the address where visiting delegations and business travellers are lodged, and by the standards of one of the world's most closed capitals, it is a genuinely comfortable and well-built hotel.

The interiors carry their French planning well—an immense atrium lobby with a glass elevator core, generous corridors and rooms that are large, light and conservatively contemporary, many with views across the fountained avenue towards the city's marble ministries and the Kopet Dag mountains on the Iranian border. Furnishings and service reflect state operation: correct and courteous rather than intuitive, with the pace of a government guesthouse at quiet times.

Facilities are extensive, including an indoor pool, tennis courts, sauna facilities and several restaurants serving Turkmen and international dishes, though venues can be subdued outside event periods. Independent travellers in Turkmenistan move with guides and pre-arranged itineraries, and the Oguzkent slots into that system smoothly, an oasis of space and air conditioning between excursions to the Darvaza gas crater or ancient Nisa. Within its unusual context, it is clearly the country's leading hotel.