Pavilion No. 66 Uzbekistan

The pavilion was built in the first half of the 1950s to a design by the Tashkent architect Stefan Polupanov as the pavilion of the Uzbek SSR. The building is U-shaped and painted white, with colonnades and carved ganch (alabaster plaster) decoration in which Uzbek ornament is combined with Soviet symbols. The main accent is the tall rotunda on slender carved columns raised above the central entrance: an open belvedere with a star-shaped ceiling that repeats the iwans of Uzbek mosques and madrasas. In 1964 the pavilion was renamed Soviet Culture, later simply Culture, and its historic decoration was partly hidden behind a false facade. The rotunda and the carving were put back in place during the restoration of the 2010s, when the later layers were stripped away. Since autumn 2023 the building has again borne the name Uzbekistan and works as the republic's exhibition and cultural centre. In the evening the lighting draws out the relief of the ganch, and the open belvedere looks almost weightless against the dark sky.

On the map