Uzbekistan tours from Italy: the Milan flight, visa-free entry and the Polos in Bukhara

Uzbekistan Airways flies nonstop between Milan Malpensa and Tashkent. In the winter timetable 2026/27 the flight leaves Milan on Tuesdays and Fridays at 19:45 and lands at 06:00 local time, after 6 h 15 min. The return, HY 255, leaves Tashkent at 15:10 and lands at Malpensa at 19:30 the same day, 7 h 20 min later. Milan stays in the airline’s summer 2027 timetable.

From Rome Fiumicino, Uzbekistan Airways flight HY 258 also goes to Tashkent, but not every week: the timetable shows single dates in the autumn of 2026 and Saturday flights from April to August 2027, so check the days before you plan. Qanot Sharq, a private Uzbek airline, also lists Malpensa – Tashkent flights on some dates. From other Italian cities the usual route is a connection in Istanbul, from where Turkish Airlines flies to Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Urgench, the airport for Khiva. More routes are in our guide to flights to Uzbekistan.

A dawn landing means the first day starts early. Book the first hotel night from the evening before, or ask us for early check-in, and sleep a few hours before your first walk. We also arrange fast-track passport control and a car to your hotel.

Tashkent is on UTC+5 all year, with no summer time: four hours ahead of Rome in winter, three hours in summer.

In the 1260s Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, Marco’s father and uncle, crossed the desert and came to a city that Marco’s book calls very great and noble, the best in all Persia: Bukhara. War had closed the roads in both directions, so they stayed three years. There they met envoys on their way to Kublai Khan, who invited them along, and that journey led, years later, to Marco’s own. When the brothers arrived, the Kalyan minaret, finished in 1127, had already stood for more than a century; you can see it today on the square of Poi Kalyan.

Samarkand has a short chapter in the book too, as a great and noble city. Marco himself, his editor Henry Yule concluded, most likely never went there: instead of describing streets, the chapter tells a legend.

Italian merchants knew these roads. Around 1340 the Florentine Francesco Balducci Pegolotti wrote a handbook for traders that describes the route to China from Tana on the Sea of Azov, where Venetian and Genoese merchants had their trading colony, through Astrakhan and Khorezm, the oasis of Khiva.

The thread runs on today. Since 2001 the Uzbek-Italian Archaeological Project “Samarkand and its Territory”, led by the University of Bologna together with Uzbek archaeologists, has studied the Samarkand oasis: its settlements, its canals and how people lived on the land around the city. And in 2024 Florence and Venice showed Uzbekistan: Avant-Garde in the Desert, at Palazzo Pitti from 16 April to 30 June and at Ca’ Foscari from 17 April to 29 September: more than 100 paintings and drawings from the Savitsky Museum in Nukus and the State Museum of Arts in Tashkent. The museum in Nukus is in our guide to the Savitsky Museum.

For travellers who come for the buildings, we have made a private tour: Tiles and Master Builders, ten days through Samarkand, Shahrisabz, Bukhara and Khiva, from Wednesday to Friday to fit the Milan flights.

You book the flight, and we arrange everything on the ground: hotels, train tickets, guides and transfers. With flights from Milan on Tuesdays and Fridays, you land on a Wednesday or a Saturday morning and fly back on a Tuesday or a Friday afternoon; we fit the route to those days.

Architecture and tiles, 10 days. The Tiles and Master Builders tour reads the buildings with you: the carved and glazed tiles of Shah-i-Zinda, the gate of Ak-Saray in Shahrisabz, the brick of the Samanid Mausoleum and the tiled minarets of Khiva. Before you go, our guides to Shah-i-Zinda and the Registan show what to look for.

The classic route, 8 or 11 days. Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva on the 8-day classic tour, or at an easier pace on the 11-day classic tour. How we lay out such trips is in Uzbekistan in 7 days and Uzbekistan in 10 days.

Crafts, wine and art. Paper, silk and ceramics on the crafts of Bukhara and Samarkand tour; two wineries, outside Tashkent and outside Samarkand, on Wine Uzbekistan; the paintings shown in Florence and Venice, at home in Nukus, on our Karakalpakstan tour. Near Bukhara you can add a day with the potters of Gijduvan: a ceramics workshop and lunch.

Your guide speaks Italian, and that is included in the price of our tours: tell us when you book, the earlier the better. For what applies to all of Europe, see our general guide to Uzbekistan tours from Europe; not sure which route fits, try our tour finder.

Spring. Spring is the best season in the cities. Easter falls on 28 March 2027 and Easter Monday on 29 March, a week after Navruz, the spring new year, which Uzbekistan celebrates on 21 March; see Navruz in Uzbekistan. The school Easter break is set by each region, so check yours. In 2027 the spring holidays give no bridges: 25 April is a Sunday and 1 May a Saturday. 2 June, Republic Day, is a Wednesday. In Tashkent and Samarkand the average May afternoon is 27–28 °C.

Summer. Ferragosto, 15 August, is a Sunday. From June to August afternoons reach 35–37 °C, so if summer is your only window, we plan the sightseeing for mornings and evenings.

Autumn, the Italian window of 2027. September and October are among the best months, with afternoons in Tashkent around 22 °C in October. And autumn 2027 brings two long weekends. 4 October, the national feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, restored as a public holiday from 2026, falls on a Monday for the first time; All Saints’ Day, 1 November, is a Monday too. Take the days in between, and an eight- or ten-day trip costs you fewer days of leave. Month by month: April, May, October and when to go.

Uzbek food is built around meat, mostly mutton, and around rice and bread. Plov, the national dish, is rice cooked in a cauldron with meat, carrots and onions, and it is a midday dish: by evening the best cauldrons are empty. In Samarkand the meat is laid on top of the rice. Non, the round bread from the clay tandir oven, comes with every meal, and green tea is poured all day. Our guides to Uzbek cuisine and plov explain what is on the table.

Tell us about allergies, diets and what you would rather not eat, and we take it into account when we plan your meals. For an evening in Samarkand, we book dinner on a terrace with wine and a view of the Registan.