Tashkent’s State Museum of History turns 150

The State Museum of History of Uzbekistan was founded in Tashkent in 1876, and this autumn it is 150 years old. On 9 October 2026 it marked the anniversary with an international conference, “Museology in the 21st century: research, traditions and innovations”.

The conference

Historians, archaeologists, museum specialists and conservators from Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, the United States, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, Tajikistan, Japan and other countries discussed archaeological research, conservation and restoration, digital technology in museums and new ways of showing ethnographic collections. The conference was organised together with the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, and at the end the guests toured the museum’s renewed displays and the Center of Islamic Civilization.

A renewed museum in a listed building

The museum closed in June 2024 and reopened in July 2026 after two years of renovation. Its collections cover archaeology, history, coins and ethnography from all over the country. The white building of 1970, once the Lenin Museum, is one of ten Tashkent modernist buildings added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2026.

For your trip

We like to start a trip here: the museum puts what you will see in Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva into one timeline. Our guide to Tashkent in one or two days shows how to fit it in with the old city and the metro.