The Uzbek capital, once the fourth largest city in the former USSR, is Central Asia's hub and has better international flight connections than any other city in the region. That said, it's not a picture-postcard destination. Thanks to a huge earthquake in 1966 and the subsequent enthusiasm of Soviet planners, little remains of the city's 2000-year history.

Most visitors agree that Tashkent is the most Soviet city in Central Asia and it’s said that many of the region’s anxious Slavs who won’t or can’t return to the Motherland are moving to the relative cultural security of this city since it is still at least half Russian-speaking.

It’s worth taking a stroll around the remnants of the old town, eski shakhar. This maze of narrow dusty streets lined by low, mudbrick houses, mosques and medressas (Islamic academies) seems to have been spared by Soviet planners to show what things would have been like without the glories of socialism.

Kukeldash Medressa is a grand 16th century academy undergoing restoration, whose plaza overflows with worshippers on warm Friday mornings; the tiny 15th century Jami mosque nearby was used during the Soviet era as a sheet metal workshop. Chorsu Bazaar, a huge open market beside Kukeldash, draws crowds of people from the countryside, many in traditional dress.

What Tashkent lacks in old things, it makes up for in big museums about them. The Museum of Fine Arts has a fine collection of the art of pre-Russian Turkestan, including Zoroastrian artefacts, serene 1000-year-old Buddhist statues and Sogdian murals. The Museum of Applied Arts opened in 1937 as a showcase for turn-of-the-century applied arts, though the building itself - designed in traditional Tashkent style - is more interesting than its contents.

There are other museums devoted to History, antiquities, literature, geology and railways. For a bit of light relief, check out the Navoi Opera & Ballet Theatre, the venue for some of the world’s cheapest classical opera and the only Soviet building in Tashkent with anything approaching a personality.