Tashkent City Break

You are met at Tashkent International Airport and transferred to your hotel. After check-in and a rest, your guide takes you out for a first, easy look at the city in the late afternoon. You begin at the Courage Monument, raised where the earthquake of 1966 was centred, then drive to the white marble Minor Mosque on the bank of the Ankhor canal. As the light goes you walk along Broadway and finish at Amir Timur Square, with the Forum Palace and the old Hotel Tashkent around you. Overnight in Tashkent.

A full day starting in the Old City at the Khast-Imam Complex, where the Barakhan Madrasah, the Tillya-Sheykh Mosque and the Mausoleum of Kaffal Shashi stand around a wide square, and where the Uthman Quran is kept. You walk the rebuilt Zarkaynar Street, then descend into Chorsu Bazaar, spice and bread and mounds of dried apricots under the turquoise dome, with the pottery galleries alongside. After lunch you ride the metro into the centre, then visit the State Museum of Applied Arts and the Alisher Navoi Opera and Ballet Theatre.

Your last morning follows the city's twentieth-century face, largely built during the reconstruction that followed the 1966 earthquake. You see the Palace of Peoples' Friendship, the State Museum of History of Uzbekistan, the ribbed slab of Hotel Uzbekistan and and the extraordinary Zhemchug House with its open-air courtyards. In 2026 an ensemble of ten Tashkent modernist buildings and urban complexes was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. You stop at the Tashkent Television Tower and at Kosmonavtlar metro station. You are then transferred to the airport for departure.