During the 20th century, the emergence of new states sometimes required the transformation of modest towns into veritable capitals. Ankara in Turkey was one such example. The Soviet Union, too, had to undertake this delicate urban planning exercise, as evidenced by Dushanbe in Tajikistan. Here, several stages marked this process, each partially erasing previous efforts. While every city remains by nature a perpetual palimpsest, the layers of the Tajik capital reveal, even today, the unique mechanisms of territorial development in Central Asia.