Romanov Palace

History

The palace was built in 1891 to designs by architects V. S. Geintselman and A. L. Benois for Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich, a member of the imperial family banished to the Turkestan region. The duke lived in the left wing and his wife in the right, and the garden was laid out by the noted Tashkent botanist I. I. Krause.

The duke died in January 1918, bequeathing the palace to the city on condition that it became a museum. His collection of European and Russian paintings, brought from St Petersburg, became the core of Tashkent's art museum in 1919. The building later housed the Republican Palace of Pioneers (1934–1980) and a museum of jewellery (1980–1993), and since 1993 it has been used for Foreign Ministry receptions.

Architecture

The long two-storey building of grey-yellow brick is flanked by round towers, and the main arches of the facade have a Gothic flavour. Life-size bronze deer once lay on marble plinths beside the entrance stairs. The domed western hall is decorated in an Eastern style and the eastern hall in a European one; master Shirin Muradov restored the carved ganch in 1978–1980.