Tashkent hides 2,200 years of history behind its wide Soviet avenues: the ancient oasis of Chach, Shaybanid madrasahs, tombs of Babur's ancestors, and the memorials of a city rebuilt twice — after 1966 and after 1991.
Founded 1876 as the Turkestan Public Museum, Uzbekistan's oldest collection runs from Stone Age Chach through Sogdian ossuaries to the 1st-century Fayaz Tepa Buddha triad. Open 09:00–17:00, closed Mondays.
Built in the 1560s for the vizier of Shaybanid ruler Abdullah Khan II, this madrasah survived the earthquakes of 1866 and 1886 while serving as a caravanserai and fortress. Its restored courtyard hujras still hold students.
Three surviving 15th-century tombs of a complex largely bulldozed in 1936: Sheikh Khovendi at-Tahur, the pyramid-domed Kaldirgochbiy, and Yunus Khan — grandfather of Babur, founder of Mughal India in Delhi.
An 1850s Kokand-era madrasah beside Navoi Park whose 34 study cells now house woodcarvers, miniaturists and ceramicists. The carved ganch mihrab and the two-storey darskhana came through the 1966 quake intact.
Opened 1996 for Timur's 660th birthday under a Khiva-style blue dome, with 3,000 exhibits: Timurid armour, astrolabes linked to Ulugh Beg's Samarkand observatory, and facsimiles of the conqueror's 1370s correspondence.
Exiled to Tashkent in 1881 for stealing his mother's diamonds, Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich built this 1891 hunting palace, financed the Hungry Steppe irrigation canals, and died here of pneumonia in January 1918.
Opened 2002 on the Bozsu bank where NKVD execution pits were uncovered, it documents the Jadid reformers shot in 1938 and the 1980s Cotton Affair purge. A domed rotunda memorial stands in the garden outside.
A 30 m Lenin statue stood here until 1991, replaced by a globe showing Uzbekistan alone. Along the arcade, the Crying Mother tends an eternal flame before brass books naming the 400,000 Uzbeks killed in 1941–45.
The 1890s mansion of Russian diplomat Alexander Polovtsev, decorated by Rishtan and Bukhara masters with carved ganch and painted ceilings, was nationalised in 1938 and now holds some 7,000 pieces of Uzbek craft.
A granite cube split at 05:24 — the moment the 26 April 1966 quake levelled 78,000 homes. The bronze couple and relief panels record the all-Union rebuild that gave Tashkent its wide avenues and microrayon blocks.
Opened 1989 beside the southern station, 13 hectares of rolling stock: an 1896 Russian steam engine, German war-reparation locomotives, and the freight cars that hauled Uzbek cotton north to Soviet mills.
Shchusev's 1947 theatre was finished by 457 Japanese prisoners of war, honoured by a plaque added in 1996, and it stood through the 1966 earthquake without a crack. Six foyers each show a different regional carving style.