Tashkent Broadway: Sayilgoh Street's Painters and Stalls
Tashkent Broadway (Sayilgoh Street): what a street portrait costs, when it's liveliest, the 2026 rebuild plan and the paperwork to take a painting home.
A black-and-white portrait on Tashkent Broadway started at 100,000 som when Gazeta.uz interviewed the painters there in May 2023, and a sitting took 15 to 20 minutes. Colour costs more and takes longer. That's about $8.50 at September 2026 exchange rates, and it's the only published figure we could find, so treat it as a floor rather than today's quote (Gazeta.uz, May 2023; last checked: September 2026). Caricatures are sold alongside the straight portraits, but nobody has published a caricature price. Agree the number before the pencil moves. Then sit still.
That little transaction is most of what Broadway is for. It isn't a monument and has no opening hours. It's the pedestrian street where Tashkent comes to be looked at, drawn and sold things.
Where Sayilgoh Street runs, and why it's called Broadway
The official name is Sayilgoh ko'chasi, from the Uzbek for a place of promenades and festivities. In Soviet times it was Karl Marx Street, one of the main shopping streets of the Russian-built city. In everyday speech almost everyone just says Broadway.
It links Amir Timur Square, with the statue of Timur on horseback and the blue-domed museum, to Mustaqillik (Independence) Square to the west. How long is it? Published figures run from about 635 to 800 metres, depending on whether you count the leafy approaches at each end, so call it a ten-minute stroll if you don't stop. You will stop.
Two metro stations bracket it: Amir Temur Xiyoboni at the square end, Mustaqillik Maydoni at the other. Start at the square, since the Timur museum and statue make a natural first stop, and walk west.
The artists' strip: what's actually on sale
The street was closed to cars in the late 1980s and painters moved into the space almost straight away. Gazeta.uz's 2023 piece described a hard gap in that history: street trading on Broadway was stopped in 2006 and only came back in 2017. So today's scene is under a decade old, though some painters first set up here in the early 1990s.
What you'll find:
- Portrait painters. Easels in a row, with finished sample portraits pinned up to show what each painter can do. Pencil is quickest and cheapest.
- Paintings for sale. Canvases propped against railings and trees: Samarkand domes, old-town street scenes, mountain landscapes. Quality runs from skilled to plainly mass-produced, and price doesn't always tell you which.
- Souvenir stalls. Fridge magnets, ceramic plates, skullcaps, small suzani panels. Handy for last-minute gifts, though the crafts worth carrying home are usually better and cheaper in the regions where they're made.
- Everything else. Street musicians, photographers touting for customers, the odd magician or acrobat, and soft-serve ice cream stands with queues of families.
One of the painters told Gazeta.uz that a day on Broadway can bring in 100,000 som or 10 million, like a bazaar. Prices here are negotiated, not fixed.
How to get a portrait that you'll actually keep
Walk the whole row first. Each painter's pinned-up samples are the honest portfolio, so pick the style you like rather than the first person who calls you over.
Then settle three things before you sit: the price, whether that price is pencil or colour, and whether it includes a cardboard tube or a plastic sleeve. A drawing stuffed loose in a backpack won't make it home. Our take: pencil is the better buy. It's faster, cheaper and the painters are practised at it; colour portraits done in a single sitting often look rushed.
Do you need Russian or Uzbek? No. A number typed into your phone calculator does the job.
What it's like on a weekend evening
Daytime Broadway on a hot July weekday is half asleep. It wakes up once the heat drops.
From around sunset, and above all on Friday to Sunday evenings, it becomes a family promenade: grandparents on the benches, teenagers filming each other, small children dragging parents towards the ice cream. It's loud and cheerful and almost entirely sober. Broadway isn't a nightlife strip; for bars, use our guide to Tashkent after dark.
Cafes with outdoor tables line the edges. They're convenient rather than good, so order coffee and cake and eat dinner a few streets away. For a better cup, head for Tashkent's speciality coffee bars, such as Tim's on Shevchenko Street.
Walking the street costs nothing, which is why it also features in our list of Tashkent things that cost nothing.
What's changing: the 2026 reconstruction plan
On 6 May 2026 the Tashkent city administration (hokimiyat) announced a full makeover of Sayilgoh Street and the ground around it. The published list covers new paving and footpaths, step-free access, lighting, irrigation, repaired fountains, new benches and bins, CCTV, signage brought under a design code, removal of illegal structures, and at least 1,000 new trees and plants (Gazeta.uz, 6 May 2026; last checked: September 2026).
Will the painters survive it? The hokimiyat says yes: street artists are meant to stay, with the space organised rather than cleared. No start date, end date or budget was published.
What this means for a visit in late 2026 or 2027: parts of the street may be fenced off, and "removal of illegal structures" could mean fewer or relocated stalls. We couldn't confirm from any news report whether work had begun by late September 2026, so check recent photos on a map app before you plan an evening around it.
Buying a painting: the export paperwork
A pencil portrait of your own face isn't going to trouble anyone at the airport. An oil painting on canvas might, and this is the part the stallholders rarely mention.
Uzbekistan's law on the export of cultural property (No. 678-I of 1998) bans the export of cultural valuables created 50 or more years ago outright. Anything else counted as cultural property leaves on an export certificate. Here's the new wrinkle: amendments signed on 23 July 2026 name the Agency of Cultural Heritage as the body that issues that certificate, where older guides (ours included) say Ministry of Culture (law text on lex.uz; last checked: September 2026). The 1999 Cabinet rules behind it give 10 days to process an application, charge a fee for the expert examination, and exempt mass-produced souvenirs and a published list of modern handicrafts. As far as we can tell, original paintings by professional artists aren't on that exempt list.
In practice, for a tourist buying a new painting on Broadway:
- Ask the seller whether they can supply the certificate or a signed receipt stating the artist, date and that the work is new.
- Don't leave it to your last day. Ten days is the official turnaround in the 1999 rules.
- Anything sold as "old" or "antique" is either not old (you're overpaying) or genuinely old (you can't take it out). Neither is a good deal.
We haven't found a documented case of a tourist losing a small street painting at Tashkent airport, and we can't tell you how strictly the rule is applied to a 40 cm canvas. The legal risk is real, though, and our Uzbekistan customs rules page covers the airport side.
Fitting it into a Tashkent day
Broadway works best as the last hour of a central-Tashkent afternoon, not as a destination on its own. A sensible run: the Amir Timur Museum before it closes, a walk past the Romanov Palace, then Broadway as the lights come on, finishing at Mustaqillik Square and the metro. Our Tashkent city guide has the rest of the day.
And if you do sit for a portrait, bring a book or a hardback folder. A loose sheet of drawing paper smudges and creases fast, and there's nowhere flat to rest it between Broadway and your hotel.