One Day in Tashkent, Using the Metro
A one-day Tashkent route built around the metro: fares, the stations worth stopping at, the old town, one museum, and where to eat in between.
Tashkent is too spread out to walk and the traffic is too slow to drive. The metro solves both, costs 1,700 so'm a journey with a contactless card, and half the stations are worth getting off at for their own sake.
Buy an ATTO card at any station on arrival. Cash tokens cost 3,000 so'm a ride, nearly double, and involve a queue (last checked: September 2026).
Morning: the old town
Metro to Chorsu. Start here and start early, because the bazaar runs roughly 08:00 to 18:00 and the produce and the temperature are both best between nine and eleven.
Go into the dome, up to the gallery, and look down at the meat and dairy floor. Then eat: the prepared-food rows do samsa, plov and shashlik, and this is a considerably better breakfast than your hotel's. Our Chorsu guide covers what's sold where.
Walk to Khast Imam. Twenty minutes north through the old town's lanes, which are the surviving pre-earthquake fabric and the only part of Tashkent that looks its age. The complex itself opens daily around 09:00 to 21:00 and holds the Uthman Quran, one of the oldest Quranic manuscripts in existence. Our Khast Imam guide explains what's in each building.
Allow an hour and a half for the two together, plus the walk.
Midday: the metro itself
This is the part to take seriously rather than treat as transport.
Photography in the stations was banned until 2018, which is why so few people outside the country know what they look like. Kosmonavtlar is the one to prioritise: dark blue tiling with ceramic medallions of Gagarin, Tereshkova and others along the platform. It was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in July 2026 along with nine other Tashkent modernist buildings.
Then Pakhtakor for the cotton-boll mosaics, Alisher Navoiy for the ribbed blue vaults, and Mustaqillik Maydoni for the chandeliers. Riding between them takes forty minutes and costs less than a coffee. Our metro guide goes station by station.
Lunch somewhere air-conditioned. In July this is not optional.
Afternoon: the centre
Amir Timur Square and around. Get off at Amir Timur Xiyoboni. The square, Hotel Uzbekistan's screen wall on one side, and the Amir Timur Museum with its ribbed dome.
Pick one museum. The Museum of Applied Arts for craft, with suzani, ceramics and woodwork in a merchant's house that is itself the exhibit, or the State Museum of History for the archaeology. Both take ninety minutes. Doing both means seeing neither. The applied arts museum is the better one if you're only doing a single day in the country.
If architecture is your thing, substitute a walk: the civic buildings of the 1960s and 70s are within a few blocks of each other here, and our guide to Soviet modernism in Tashkent sets out a route.
Evening
Two options, and they suit different people.
The TV tower for the view, if you want to see how large the city actually is. Or dinner somewhere ordinary. Our Tashkent eating guide points at the neighbourhood places rather than the tourist restaurants, and the gap in quality is significant.
A note on plov: the famous Besh Qozon centre near the TV tower cooks in the morning and is finished by early afternoon. It is a lunch destination, not a dinner one. Turning up at seven means eating whatever is left.
If you have a second day
The obvious addition is out of the city rather than in it.
The mountains behind Tashkent are an hour and a half away, and the Chimgan and Charvak country is genuinely different from anything else on a standard Uzbekistan itinerary: reservoir, ridges, chairlifts, and air that is ten degrees cooler than the plain in August. It is the single best use of a spare Tashkent day, and it is what people who live here do at weekends.
The alternative, for anyone more interested in the city itself, is simply to walk a residential district without a plan. Tashkent rewards that more than its monument list suggests, and the mahalla streets behind the boulevards are where the city actually happens.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does the Tashkent metro cost?
One flat fare for any journey regardless of distance: around 1,700 so'm with a contactless ATTO card or the mobile app, or about 3,000 so'm for a single cash token. Buy the card at a station window on your first ride and it pays for itself within four journeys.
Can you photograph the Tashkent metro?
Yes. Photography was prohibited until 2018 because the stations were classified as defence installations, and it is now permitted throughout the network. You'll still see occasional confusion about this in older guidebooks and from people who remember the old rule.
Is one day enough for Tashkent?
For a first visit, yes. The city's highlights are the bazaar, the old town, the metro and one museum, and that fits in a day. What you lose is the city's ordinary texture, which is most of what makes Tashkent likeable. Two days is noticeably better if you have them.
What's the best way to get around Tashkent?
Metro for anything on the network, Yandex Go for everything else. The metro is fast, cheap and genuinely interesting; taxis are cheap but the traffic is not. Walking works within neighbourhoods and badly between them, because the distances look shorter on a map than they are.
Where should I eat in Tashkent on a short visit?
Chorsu Bazaar for breakfast or an early lunch, Besh Qozon for plov before about two in the afternoon, and a neighbourhood place for dinner. Avoid the restaurants immediately around the main squares, which charge for the location.
The one thing to cut
Independence Square. It is large, ceremonial, and there is nothing to do there. Every one-day list includes it and nobody has ever come back from Tashkent talking about it.
Spend that hour underground instead. For the city in full, see our Tashkent travel guide, and the national portal uzbekistan.travel keeps official details for the Khast Imam complex. Metro fares and current operating hours are listed at metrotashkent.com.
Featured image: Adam Harangozó (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons.