Amir Timur Square: The Statue That Keeps Changing
Kaufman, Stalin, a giant Marx head, then Timur: who stood on Tashkent's central plinth, the Timur museum's hours and exhibits, and what else is around.
General Konstantin von Kaufman in 1913. A wooden hammer and sickle called "Liberated Labour" in 1918. A plaster Lenin bust for about six months around 1930. Stalin in bronze in the late 1940s or early 1950s. An obelisk. A granite head of Karl Marx in 1968. And since 1993 or 1994, depending on which source you trust, Timur on horseback. That's the occupant list of one spot in the middle of Amir Timur Square, and it's the best reason to spend twenty minutes here.
The square is a round park where Tashkent's main avenues meet. It's free, it never closes, and no sign says what stood on the plinth before. So here's the sequence, with the dates checked and the places where good sources disagree left visible.
One plinth, seven occupants
The park was laid out in 1882 in front of the Turkestan Military District headquarters, at the crossing of what were then Moskovsky and Kaufmanovsky avenues.
| Occupant | Up | Down | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kaufman, the first governor-general of Turkestan | 4 May 1913 | 1917–1918 | General with a Cossack bugler and a standard-bearer; eagles on the pedestal |
| "Liberated Labour" (hammer and sickle) | 7 Nov 1918 | c. 1928 | Wooden; reportedly burned when homeless people lit fires inside it |
| Lenin bust | c. 1930 | c. 1930 | Plaster, lasted about six months |
| Stalin | late 1940s or April 1952 | 1961 or 1962 | Bronze, full figure |
| Obelisk | 1962 | 1968 | Nicknamed the "Russian-Uzbek dictionary" |
| Karl Marx | 5 May 1968 | 1993 | Red granite head by D. B. Ryabichev |
| Amir Timur, equestrian | 31 Aug 1993 or 31 Aug 1994 | still there | Bronze, by Ilkhom and Kamol Jabbarov |
Sources: the Tashkent local-history site mytashkent.uz and a 2020 history of the square on uzbloknot.com, with the statue date and the museum opening cross-checked against the national tourism portal. The years between 1928 and the late 1940s are thin in every source we read.
Kaufman: the conqueror who gave the square its first name
Kaufman ran Russian Turkestan from 1867 until his death in 1882, and the monument was dedicated to him "and the troops who conquered Central Asia." Both local sources we used give the unveiling as 4 May 1913, though one captioned archive photo says 4 July. After the revolution the general came off, the square became Revolution Square, and it kept that name for most of the Soviet period.
Stalin: two dates, both defensible
Here's where the record gets messy. Uzbloknot puts the Stalin statue in the late 1940s. Readers of mytashkent.uz, digging through archives, found a notice in the newspaper Kyzyl Uzbekistan of 26 April 1952 reporting the opening, and suggest the 1949 date is when it was decided rather than built. Removal is given as 1961 by one source and 1962 by the other. We lean to 1952: a dated newspaper beats a recollection.
Marx: the head that looked like a torch
Ryabichev's Marx wasn't a figure at all. It was an enormous head whose hair and beard swept upward like a flame, carved in red granite and set on a pedestal on 5 May 1968, the 150th anniversary of Marx's birth. It went in 1993, two years after independence, because it no longer fitted the state's story about itself.
Timur: 1993 or 1994?
Straight answer: we can't settle it, and you'll see both years on signs and websites. The national tourism portal and uzbloknot say the bronze statue was unveiled on 31 August 1994, the eve of the third independence anniversary, with President Islam Karimov attending. Mytashkent.uz and several Russian-language references say 31 August 1993, the second anniversary, and one mytashkent account describes that first version as plaster.
One clue favours 1993: the metro station under the square was renamed Amir Temur Xiyoboni on 1 August 1993, per the metro's own station history. A plaster statue in 1993 replaced by bronze in 1994 would square both accounts, but we haven't found a document that says so. Treat it as a guess.
The statue shows Timur in armour on a horse, one hand raised, with his motto "Strength is in justice" on the pedestal in four languages. The face follows Mikhail Gerasimov's 1941 reconstruction from the skull, the model for nearly every image of him in Uzbekistan. Our history of Timur and his campaigns covers why a 14th-century conqueror became the new state's founding figure.
The ring of buildings around it
Walk the circumference and you get most of the city's last 150 years in about fifteen minutes.
- Tashkent Chimes (the clock towers). The first tower went up in 1947 and started running on 30 April that year; its ganch carving is the reason to look closely. The matching second tower was added in 2009, the year Tashkent marked its 2,200th anniversary. From across the park the two are hard to tell apart, which is the point.
- The law university. A low brick building from the Russian period that housed a gymnasium (school) before the revolution. Sources split on whether it was the boys' or the girls' gymnasium, and the square originally had both.
- Hotel Uzbekistan. Seventeen storeys, curved, finished in 1974, its whole facade a concrete screen. Our guide to Tashkent's Soviet modernism explains who designed it and why UNESCO's 2026 listing skipped it.
- Palace of International Forums "Uzbekistan". The white colonnade with the dome, opened on 28 August 2009 according to the Tashkent city administration. It's a state venue you'll only enter for a concert or conference.
- The Amir Timur Museum. The blue-ribbed dome on the north side, opened 18 October 1996. It's the one building here with a ticket; see the next section for what's inside.
Inside the Amir Timur Museum
The State Museum of the History of the Temurids opened in 1996, the 660th anniversary of Timur's birth, according to the national tourism portal. It's a circular, three-storey building with a ribbed blue dome, built in a deliberately Timurid idiom, and the inside is all marble, gilding and a painted ceiling over the central atrium.
What's on display
- Manuscripts and documents, including copies of works produced under Timurid patronage.
- Arms, armour and coins from the period.
- Ceramics and metalwork from Samarkand and the wider empire.
- Models and reconstructions of the great buildings, useful if you haven't reached Samarkand yet.
- Gerasimov's reconstruction of Timur's face, the same one the statue outside follows.
A fair warning: much of it is reproduction rather than original, which disappoints some visitors. The building, the murals and the way the story is framed are the real exhibit.
The tomb opening behind the face
In June 1941 a Soviet team led by the anthropologist Mikhail Gerasimov opened Timur's grave in Samarkand. The examination matched what the chronicles said: injuries to the right arm and leg that fit the nickname Timur the Lame, and a man tall for his time. Gerasimov specialised in rebuilding faces from skulls, and his head of Timur became the template for nearly every image of him in the country.
Guides will tell you the tomb carried a curse, and that Germany invaded the Soviet Union days after it was opened. The dates do line up, which is why the story never dies. It's a coincidence with excellent timing rather than evidence of anything. The remains went back into the ground in late 1942, and the tomb itself is covered in our Gur-e-Amir guide.
Reading the politics
In Soviet schools Timur was taught as a destroyer. After 1991 the new state needed a national figure who predated Russia, and he was the obvious choice: banknotes, street names, this square and this museum followed. The historical Timur was both a patron of extraordinary architecture and a conqueror whose campaigns killed on an enormous scale. The museum presents the first half with great care and the second lightly, which is normal for a national museum anywhere. Knowing that makes the visit a more interesting hour, not a worse one.
Visiting the museum
- Hours: visitor listings give Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 17:00 or 18:00 depending on the source, closed Monday.
- Tickets: a few dollars for foreigners (listings in 2026 suggest roughly 30,000 to 40,000 som), plus a separate photography fee; confirm at the desk (last checked: September 2026).
- Time needed: 45 minutes to an hour.
- Guides: available at the desk and worth it, because English labelling is limited.
If you want more museum time nearby, the Museum of Applied Arts is a short taxi ride away.
November 2009: the week the shade went
Older photos show a dim, leafy park where chess players sat under plane trees. Between 12 and 20 November 2009, those trees were cut down, roughly 400 of them including chinar (oriental plane), ash, oak, maple and chestnut, according to a 2023 Gazeta.uz retrospective built on witness accounts. Officials called it landscaping and cited overcrowding, disease and safety.
Ages are disputed too. Tour sites routinely say the trees were over 100 years old. Historians quoted by Gazeta.uz put most at 40 to 60, even though the first plane trees had gone in around 1882. The rumour that the park was cleared to open sightlines to the new Forums palace has never been confirmed.
What replaced them is younger trees, lawns and fountains, with far less shade. In July, that matters: midday here is exposed.
Getting there, and when to go
Amir Temur Xiyoboni station on the red Chilonzor line comes up at the square, and a passage connects it to Yunus Rajabiy on the green Yunusobod line. One stop north on that line, Abdulla Qodiriy station is a couple of minutes from the dried fruit and nut rows of Alay Bazaar. Mustaqillik Maydoni is one stop away if you'd rather walk in along Sayilgoh Street, the pedestrian "Broadway", a strip of cafes, portrait painters, souvenir stalls and buskers that is where Tashkent goes in the evening. Our Tashkent metro walkthrough has the stations worth stopping at on the way.
Budget for a fare change. From 1 October 2026 a card or app ride rises from 1,700 to 2,500 som, a second ride within the hour costs 1,500, and cash stays at 3,000, as approved by the city council on 25 September and reported by Gazeta.uz (last checked: September 2026). That's still about 20 US cents.
Come after dark if you can. The buildings around the edge are lit up in the evening, the heat has gone, and the square fills with families and strollers heading to Broadway. We couldn't find a published lighting schedule, so don't plan around a switch-on time.
One last thing to look for: the pedestal. The spot under it has held a monument, on and off, since 1913, and once you know the list, it's hard to see Timur without picturing the head of Marx that sat there for 25 years before him.
For photographers: the museum dome and the statue line up from the northwest corner of the park, with trees framing both. It's the standard Tashkent postcard shot and takes about a minute to find. Add the museum and an hour on Broadway at dusk and you have the easiest good half-day in the capital; our Tashkent travel guide fits it into a wider day.