Audio tour Intro

Tashkent, with its more than two-thousand-year history, first became the capital of the region after the Russian Empire began its expansion into Central Asia in the late 19th century. Before that, it was a major trading city on one of the branches of the Silk Road.

By the mid-1950s, several factors converged in Tashkent: a rapidly growing population, the need to improve living conditions, and the authorities’ desire to make the city modern and open to the world.

The main catalyst for large-scale modernization was the earthquake of April 26, 1966. Chronicles often describe it as a catastrophe that completely destroyed the city, but that is not entirely true: the main damage was to old adobe houses. Many buildings in colonial modern, neoclassical, constructivist, and modernist styles survived, while part of the historic fabric was demolished with tanks and bulldozers during reconstruction.

The republic’s leadership used the earthquake as a pretext for a rapid and large-scale transformation of the city. The primary goal was to resettle people from dilapidated one-story houses into modern apartment buildings and to clear space for parks, squares, wide avenues, and new administrative and public buildings.

There is evidence of this. The master plan for Tashkent’s reconstruction was developed as part of an all-Union competition initiated in Moscow in 1964 and had been approved in its main provisions several months before the earthquake. Chief architect of Tashkent, Sabir Adilov, mentioned this in a newsreel from the 1980s.

According to official data, five people died in the earthquake; unofficial figures put the number at eight, most of whom died from heart attacks. This is another argument that the scale of the tragedy was exaggerated.

Sharaf Rashidov, who headed Uzbekistan at the time, quickly seized the opportunity. On the day of the earthquake, Leonid Brezhnev arrived in Tashkent — he was shown the affected areas, and soon a decision was made to bring massive resources to the city. The reconstruction of Tashkent became an all-Union project: the best specialists came from across the Soviet Union, and equipment and building materials were delivered in large quantities.

Rashidov invited leading architects to participate in the reconstruction, offering them a rare opportunity — to realize bold ideas that were otherwise restricted by strict urban planning norms in other cities. In Tashkent, they were given complete freedom.

The city became a large-scale architectural laboratory, where ambitious urban planning concepts were implemented in a short time. Tashkent was not simply rebuilt — it was reimagined.

In just a decade, it acquired a new look: a modernist concept united its eastern and European parts, and concrete — as a new interpretation of tosha or stone — became the primary material.

Thus emerged a dynamic metropolis with wide avenues, palaces of culture, museums, hotels, and administrative buildings. Its architectural identity took shape as a phenomenon now known as Tashkent Modernism.

For each building, I’ve selected rare archival photographs that show how dramatically Tashkent and its architecture have changed. Be sure to check them at every stop along the route.