AMUR TIMUR MUSEUM

Dedicated to the Timurid era and its historical legacy, the Amur Timur Museum opened its doors in 1996, to mark the ^660th anniversary of the great emperor's birth. The architecture is a synthesis of oriental and modern architectural styles of the period. The building is circular in shape, with a large ribbed dome, parapets on the roof and an external colonnade that forms a gallery.

The museum boasts some 100 rare pieces, including the huge ^7th-century Koran, but it's the replicas of Uzbekistan's monuments that attract the most attention. The Bibi Khanum mosque and the Gour Emir are reproduced in their original state, which, if you visit the museum at the end of your stay, will give you a good understanding of your trip. A model of the Taj Mahal, built by Bukhara architects on the orders of the grandson of Babur (last of the Timurids, driven out by the Uzbeks and left to found a new empire in India), also enables you to compare styles and make comparisons.

As the paintings on the second floor testify, the cult of Tamerlane doubles as that of Uzbekistan, glorified through its national hero and its indispensable president Islam Karimov. Paintings by contemporary artists, of very uneven quality, illustrate the propaganda commission and the Soviet-style style, far from having disappeared with the collapse of the USSR. An image revived under Karimov, who is reviving the codes of the past.