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Museums & Galleries in Osh
Kyrgyzstan's second city and the capital of the south, an ancient Silk Road crossroads in the Fergana Valley that claims some three thousand years of history. Osh is dominated by the sacred crag of Sulaiman-Too, has one of Central Asia's great bazaars, and is the gateway to the Pamir-Alay ranges.
Why here
Osh is the oldest city in Kyrgyzstan and its Silk Road heart, and the way into its history is Sulaiman-Too, the Sacred Mountain that became the country's first UNESCO World Heritage site in 2009. The five-peaked crag rises straight out of the city and has drawn pilgrims for more than a millennium and a half, its slopes marked with ancient petroglyphs, cave shrines and two reconstructed sixteenth-century mosques. Carved into the mountainside is a striking cave museum, its entrance a glassed concrete arch, and at the foot of the crag a larger national museum holds tens of thousands of objects on the archaeology, ethnography and art of southern Kyrgyzstan. Together they turn a morning on the mountain into the clearest single lesson in Central Asian and Silk Road history the country offers.
Best months
The museums are open year-round, typically Tuesday to Sunday, with Monday the closed day, so pair a visit with the climb over Sulaiman-Too and the Osh bazaar. Spring and autumn are the most comfortable times to be in Osh, since the Fergana Valley summer is very hot and the exposed mountain paths offer little shade. Modest dress is appropriate at the shrines and mosques on the mountain.
Getting there & around
Osh has an airport with frequent flights from Bishkek, and is the road gateway to the Pamir Highway. The Sulaiman-Too complex sits in the city centre and is reached on foot or by any city bus or taxi; entry to the museums is a small fee. Give a half day to combine the base museum, the cave museum and the climb to the summit shrine, and note the mountain paths are steep and unshaded.
Skill levels: beginner
Schools & guides (1)
National Historical and Archaeological Museum Complex Sulayman
OrganizerOne of Kyrgyzstan's largest museums, in Osh, founded in 1949 as the Osh Regional Museum, its present building completed in 1978 for the city's three-thousandth anniversary. Part of it is carved into Sulaiman-Too as a cave museum of thirteen rooms behind a glassed concrete arch, and the collection exceeds 33,000 pieces of archaeology, ethnography and art. It anchors Sulaiman-Too, the first Kyrgyz UNESCO World Heritage site (2009), and keeps no official public website.