Tashkent Rebuilt Itself After a 1966 Earthquake, and Its Metro Stations Are the Best Argument for the Result

Most Uzbekistan itineraries treat Tashkent as an airport with a city attached, something to clear on the way to Samarkand's turquoise domes or Bukhara's old town. That is a reasonable instinct and the wrong call. Tashkent's charm has nothing to do with medieval Silk Road architecture, because a 1966 earthquake flattened much of the old city and the Soviet Union rebuilt it from scratch as a model capital, wide boulevards and all. What that rebuilding left behind is one of the more unusual metro systems anywhere.

A metro built as a bomb shelter and a showcase

The Tashkent Metro opened in 1977, the first in Central Asia, and each station was designed as a distinct set piece, tiled and chandeliered, themed around cosmonauts, poets or the region's cotton industry. Photography inside the network was restricted for decades on security grounds and was only formally permitted from 2018, which is part of why the stations feel like a discovery rather than a tourist circuit even now.

What the earthquake didn't take

The Chorsu Bazaar, under its turquoise dome, survived and remains the city's working market rather than a staged one. The Khast Imam complex, home to what is claimed to be one of the world's oldest Qurans, sits in the older quarter that escaped the worst of the rebuilding. Between the two, and the wide Soviet-era parks in between, Tashkent reads less as a missing link in the Silk Road story and more as its own separate, stranger chapter.

Traveller tips

• A one-day metro photography pass is not required as of this writing, but check current rules locally since restrictions have shifted before.
• Chorsu Bazaar is busiest and most interesting in the morning, before the midday heat sets in.
• Most Samarkand- and Bukhara-bound trains depart from Tashkent, so a one- or two-night stop here is close to unavoidable regardless of itinerary.
• Uzbekistan's high-speed Afrosiyob trains connect Tashkent to Samarkand in under two and a half hours, making the metro detour an easy add rather than a detour.