Tashkent Audio Tours

Tashkent's name comes from the Turkic for stone and the Persian for city -- a stone city, settled since at least the 3rd century BC, known then as Chach. It prospered on the Silk Road, was destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1219, recovered, thrived under the Timurids, was conquered by Tsarist Russia in 1865, and then became capital of Soviet Uzbekistan. A 1966 earthquake that killed 78,000 people and left 300,000 homeless gave Soviet planners the opportunity to rebuild the entire center from scratch -- which they did, with wide tree-lined avenues, enormous parade squares, and Modernist civic buildings that remain in use today.

The Chorsu Bazaar, the sprawling domed market in the old city, predates the Soviet reconstruction by centuries.

Blue-tiled domes mark the entrances to sections selling bread, spices, dried fruit, meat, and bolts of ikat silk. The Kukeldash Madrasa, a 16th-century Islamic school adjacent to the bazaar, was repurposed as a caravanserai under Russian rule and is now being slowly restored. The Alisher Navoi Opera and Ballet Theatre, completed in 1947, was built by Japanese prisoners of war from World War II and remains one of the finest examples of Soviet Orientalist architecture anywhere.