Turkmenistan enters record books for having the most white marble buildings
Guinness World Records chief honours central Asian nation for its newly grand capital city
Associated Press in Ashgabat
The Guardian, Sunday 26 May 2013 18.52 BST
Turkmenistan's former president is surrounded by marble as he watches a military parade alongside a general. Photograph: Igor Sasin/AFP/Getty Images
The central Asian nation of Turkmenistan has earned another spot in the record books, with its capital recognised as having more white marble on its buildings than any other city in the world.
The capital, Ashgabat, has been transformed from a post-Soviet backwater into a city of hundreds of soaring marble-clad government buildings and apartment blocks in an ostentatious display of Turkmenistan's natural gas wealth.
Guinness World Records editor-in-chief Craig Glenday on Saturday awarded Ashgabat the record for the highest density of white marble-clad buildings, saying it "shows that the architectural restyling effort led by the Turkmen government has come to a high spectacular level".
Turkmenistan has developed a fixation on record-breaking. Last year, it was recognised as having the world's largest ferris wheel in an enclosed space.
