Your guide meets you at your hotel in the morning, and we start with the building that became the emblem of modernist Tashkent: the State Museum of History. It opened in 1970 as the Lenin Museum, a cube whose walls hide behind geometric sun screens faced with whitish-pink marble. The architects Yevgeny Rozanov and Vladimir Shestopalov answered the Tashkent sun with the old idea of the carved lattice. The museum reopened in July 2026 after two years of renovation, and we go inside: it holds more than 350,000 objects, from archaeology to manuscripts.

Next come two buildings of 1974. The State Museum of Arts is another cube, clad in aluminium sheets set in metal frames, with a glazed upper part that softens the light in the halls. The Central Exhibition Hall of the Academy of Arts carries national ornament on its facade, with skylights over the halls.

On Navoi Avenue stands the Alisher Navoi Cinema Palace, opened in 1964 as the Panoramic Cinema. Its main hall was built for a curved screen about 34 m wide, and from 1968 to 1988 it hosted the Tashkent International Film Festival. The foyer now holds the Museum of Cinema of Uzbekistan.

In the afternoon we go underground. The Tashkent metro was designed after the earthquake for shaking of up to 9 points, in thick reinforced concrete, and every station got its own theme and its own artists. We ride from Alisher Navoi, with its domes and turquoise reliefs from Navoi’s Khamsa, past the crystal chandeliers of Mustaqillik Maydoni, to Kosmonavtlar, opened in 1984: walls that deepen from turquoise to dark blue, glass stars along the ceiling and ceramic medallions of Ulugh Beg, Icarus, Gagarin and Tereshkova.

Near Kosmonavtlar stands Zhemchug, the “Pearl”, a block of flats finished in 1985 to a design by Ofelia Aydinova. Its two semicircular halves are joined every three floors by open terraces, shared courtyards in the air for the residents.

Good to know: Photography in the metro has been allowed since June 2018. Zhemchug is a home to many families, so we see it from the street.

Overnight in Tashkent

We start at Chorsu in the morning, when the bazaar is at its busiest. The market is old, the building is not: the project by the architects Vladimir Azimov and Sabir Adylov dates from 1980, and the complex opened in 1990 under a main dome of 86 metres ringed by seven smaller ones. Tiling the big dome took until 1993. Across the street, Chorsu station of 1989 was dug as an open pit through the bazaar square and lined with white Gazgan marble.

Nearby, on Khadra Square, the State Circus opened in 1976. Its scaled turquoise-blue dome is often compared to a flying saucer; below it you find a concrete lattice, carved ganch, marble, stained glass and ceramic mosaic. It has no glazed foyer, a choice made for the Tashkent climate.

Then the Peoples’ Friendship Palace, opened in 1981 to a design by Yevgeny Rozanov: the largest concert hall in the country, built with Nurata and Gazgan marble, its facade drawn from national ornament and the stalactite vaults of old portals. The banquet hall inside holds three large Florentine mosaics; the halls open for concerts and events.

After lunch we drive out to Parkent, about 45 km from Tashkent, into the foothills at around 1,100 m. Here stands the Big Solar Furnace, built between 1981 and 1987. Sixty-two moving mirrors, the heliostats, throw sunlight onto a concave concentrator as tall as a twelve-storey building, and at its focus the temperature can reach 3,000 °C. From the viewpoint at the top of the site you see the whole wall of mirrors at once. In the evening we drive you back to your hotel in Tashkent.

Good to know: The furnace is the only part of the UNESCO site outside the city. If you have one day only, we leave it out and keep the rest.