Most travelers treat Tashkent as a layover. They land, check the train schedule to Samarkand, and leave before the city shows its face. This is a mistake. Uzbekistan's capital is not a polished museum piece like Bukhara or a postcard fantasy like Samarkand. It is something more honest: a city that rebuilt itself from rubble, that wears Soviet concrete and Islamic tile with the same shrug, and that moves at a pace you have to adjust to rather than race through.
The earthquake of 26 April 1966 changed everything. At 5:23 in the morning, a quake measured at 5.1 on the Richter scale flattened most of the old city. The Monument of Courage on Sharof Rashidov Avenue still marks the exact moment — a bronze family stands before a granite block split by a crack, the clock face frozen. Within hours, workers from across the USSR arrived. Within three years, Tashkent had been rebuilt as a model Soviet city. That history is not buried. It is the architecture you walk through.
Start with the metro. Opened in 1977, it was the first underground railway in Central Asia, and each station was designed as a propaganda monument to Soviet achievement. The photography ban was lifted in 2018, so you can now document what was once a state secret. Alisher Navoiy station has domed ceilings of blue and gold filigree that look borrowed from a Timurid mosque. Kosmonavtlar station is all deep-space blue and black, its walls lined with portraits of Gagarin and Tereshkova. Paxtakor station celebrates cotton harvests with walls of blue and green mosaic — a pretty surface over an ugly history, since Soviet irrigation demands for cotton drained the Aral Sea. The stations are clean, cheap, and efficient. A single ride costs about 2,000 Uzbekistani som, roughly 15 cents.
From the metro, the old city begins at the Hazrati Imam Complex, also called Khast Imam. This is Tashkent's spiritual center — an ensemble of mosques, madrasas, and courtyards that dates in parts to the 16th century, though much was rebuilt after the earthquake. The Muyi Muborak Library houses the Uthman Quran, a manuscript believed to date to the 7th century and considered one of the oldest surviving copies of the Quran in the world. It sits behind glass in a climate-controlled room, its ancient pages a rebuke to anyone who calls Tashkent "just Soviet." The complex also includes the Barakhan Madrasa, built in the 1530s, and the Tillya Sheikh Mosque, its turquoise dome visible from several streets away. The courtyards are quiet in the early morning, filled with the soft echo of prayer and the click of prayer beads.
A short walk south brings you to Chorsu Bazaar. This is the oldest and largest market in Central Asia, and the green-tiled domes of its main hall have been a Tashkent landmark for centuries. Inside, vendors stack pyramids of melons, dried apricots, and raisins. Bakers pull rounds of non bread from tandir clay ovens at the entrance. The spice section hits you first — cumin, coriander, saffron, and the red pepper paste used in nearly every dish. Prices are unmarked. You negotiate, or you watch what locals pay and match it. A kilo of dried apricots runs about 35,000 som. A fresh loaf of non is 5,000. The market opens around 7:00 AM and stays busy until mid-afternoon.
Next to the bazaar stands the Kokaldosh Madrasa, one of the largest in Tashkent, built in the 1560s. It survived the 1966 earthquake with damage, was repaired, and spent the Soviet era as a museum of atheism — a detail that tells you everything about how this city layers its identities. Today it functions again as a madrasa, though when I visited there were only a handful of students in the courtyard.
For Soviet Tashkent, walk to Amir Temur Square. The equestrian statue of Timur dominates the space, but the real interest is the surrounding architecture. Hotel Uzbekistan is brutalism at its most uncompromising — a concrete fortress of a building that opened in 1974 and still functions as a hotel. The State Museum of History of Uzbekistan sits nearby in a neoclassical building that houses everything from Scythian gold to Soviet-era posters. The nearby Independence Square, formerly Lenin Square, has been re-landscaped with fountains and monuments to national heroes, but the scale is still Soviet — vast, symmetrical, designed to make the individual feel small.
The Museum of Applied Arts occupies a former diplomat's mansion from the early 20th century, and the building itself is as much the attraction as the collection inside. The ceilings are carved wood and painted plaster, the courtyards quiet, the rooms filled with embroidered suzanis, ceramics from Rishtan, and metalwork that continues traditions older than the city. Entry is about 30,000 som. Plan an hour.
For views, the Tashkent TV Tower rises 375 meters near the city center, making it the tallest structure in Central Asia. The observation deck at 100 meters costs around 40,000 som and gives you the full extent of the city's sprawl — boulevards that run for kilometers, the patchwork of old mahallas and new high-rises, the snow-capped Tian Shan mountains on clear days. It is not a beautiful city from above. It is a revealing one.
The Minor Mosque, completed in 2014, sits on the bank of the Ankhor Canal. Its white marble exterior and four minarets make it the most photographed religious building in the city, especially at dusk when the structure lights up and reflects in the water. It is modern, yes, but built with craft — the tilework inside was done by artisans from the same workshops that restored Samarkand's Registan.
Food in Tashkent is not an afterthought. The Central Asian Plov Center, also known as Besh Qozon, sits at the foot of the TV Tower and operates like a public institution. There is no printed menu. The waiter tells you what the oshpaz — the master plov chef — has cooked that day in his giant wood-fired kazans. Wedding plov comes with chickpeas and raisins. The Tashkent style uses cottonseed oil and layers the ingredients. Portions run from 25,000 to 35,000 som, roughly $2 to $3, though most tourists order the reduced portion at 0.7 scale, which is still generous. Add a quail egg or kazy, the cured horse sausage, for a few thousand more. The flatbread is baked at the entrance in tandir ovens and costs about 7,000 som. The dining hall is loud, crowded, and functional. This is not a restaurant for ambiance. It is a restaurant for understanding why UNESCO listed Uzbek plov as Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Caravan Restaurant, about two kilometers from Amir Temur Square, offers a more composed setting — carved wood, rugs, lanterns — with a menu that covers shashlik, lagman noodles, manti dumplings, and the full range of Uzbek staples. It is a reliable dinner spot. For a lighter lunch, the Plov Museum on Labzak Street serves regional variations of the national dish in a setting that is part restaurant, part exhibition — not a tourist trap, but a place that takes the craft seriously.
Sayilgoh Street, locally called Broadway, runs south from Amir Temur Square and fills with street artists, souvenir stalls, and small cafés in the evenings. The chestnut trees were planted in the Soviet era and now shade a strip of book cafés and ice cream vendors. It is pleasant without being essential.
What to skip: the Magic City theme park near the Seoul Mun water stream. It is a kitsch collection of fairground rides and a Disney-esque castle that has nothing to do with Tashkent and everything to do with a developer's fantasy. Skip it. The Tashkent Zoo is cramped and outdated. The newer shopping malls are interchangeable with any other mall on the planet.
Tashkent is not a city that reveals itself quickly. It does not have the instant visual punch of Samarkand's Registan or the medieval density of Bukhara's old city. What it has is context — the layered story of a Silk Road settlement that became a Soviet showcase, that rebuilt itself after near-total destruction, and that is now negotiating what it means to be Uzbek and modern at the same time. Give it two full days. Walk the metro stations in the morning, the old city before noon, the bazaar at lunch, and the Soviet squares in the late afternoon light. The city does not ask to be loved. It asks to be understood.
Practical notes: The metro runs from roughly 5:00 AM to midnight. Taxis are cheap — a ride across the city costs 20,000 to 40,000 som — but negotiate the price before getting in, or use the Yandex Go app for metered fares. The high-speed train to Samarkand takes about two hours and costs from 120,000 som. Book in advance through the Uzbekistan Railways website. Visa-free entry is available for citizens of many countries for up to 30 days, but check current policy before travel. Cash is still king in the bazaars and smaller restaurants, though cards are increasingly accepted in hotels and chain cafés. Download an offline map — street signs are not always consistent, and the city sprawls.
By Amara Okafor
Nigerian-British wellness practitioner and cultural historian. Amara specializes in traditional healing practices and spiritual tourism. Certified yoga instructor and Ayurvedic consultant who writes about finding inner peace through cultural immersion.