All activities / Museums & Galleries / Dushanbe
Museums & Galleries in Dushanbe
Tajikistan's capital, a low-rise, tree-lined city laid out along Rudaki Avenue in a valley south of the Hisor range. Largely built in the twentieth century, Dushanbe holds the national museums, the towering Ismoil Somoni monument and one of the world's tallest flagpoles, and is the usual start and end point for trips into the Pamir and Fann mountains.
Why here
The National Museum of Antiquities in Dushanbe is the single best place to grasp how much history ran through this corner of Central Asia. Its centrepiece is the Buddha in Nirvana, a reclining clay Buddha almost thirteen metres long excavated from the Ajina-Teppa monastery in the Vakhsh valley, the largest ancient Buddha in Central Asia, disfigured in the Arab conquest of the seventh century and painstakingly reassembled. Around it the collection runs from the Bronze Age town of Sarazm, a UNESCO site, through the Greek-influenced finds of the Oxus Temple, including a portrait of Alexander as Hercules, to the fifth to seventh century wall paintings of Sogdian Penjikent with their famous harpist. It is a compact two floors that turns the Silk Road from an idea into objects, and a natural first or last stop in the capital.
Best months
The museum is open year round, usually from mid-morning through the working day and closed at least one day a week, which makes it a dependable option in any season and a good use of a hot summer afternoon or a winter day when the mountains are shut. Labelling is mainly in Tajik and Russian with limited English, so a guide or a good background read adds a lot, especially for the Sogdian and Buddhist material.
Getting there & around
The National Museum of Antiquities sits in central Dushanbe on Rajabovykh Street, a short taxi ride or walk from Rudaki Avenue and the main hotels, and tickets are inexpensive and bought on arrival. It pairs naturally with the larger National Museum of Tajikistan nearby for a fuller day, and photography usually carries a small extra fee. Allow one to two hours.
Skill levels: beginner
Schools & guides (1)
National Museum of Antiquities of Tajikistan
OrganizerThe National Museum of Antiquities of Tajikistan opened in 2001 in central Dushanbe, under the Academy of Sciences and its A. Donish Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography. It holds roughly five thousand objects spanning two millennia and is best known for the Buddha in Nirvana, an almost thirteen-metre reclining clay Buddha from Ajina-Teppa, alongside finds from Sarazm, the Oxus Temple and the Sogdian wall paintings of Penjikent. It sits on Rajabovykh Street in the city centre.