Fayzulla Khodjaev House-Museum

Most of Bukhara's monuments are public buildings: mosques, madrasahs, markets. This house shows how the city's wealthiest families actually lived at the end of the emirate. It was built in the late 19th century by the merchant Ubaydullah Khodjaev, who is said to have made his fortune in the karakul lambskin trade, and it remained the family home until the 1920s.

The house

Like every traditional Bukhara house, it turns its back on the street. Behind plain walls lie two courtyards: the outer one for men and guests, the inner one for women and family life. Around them are summer rooms open to the air through tall wooden porches, and winter rooms with thick walls. The reception rooms are the reason to come: ceilings painted in deep reds and greens, walls of carved ganch plaster with rows of niches for porcelain, carved doors and columns. The displays recreate the life of a merchant household, with kitchens, chests, copper and silverware, musical instruments and silk and velvet robes.

The son

Fayzulla Khodjaev (1896–1938), the merchant's son, joined the reformist Young Bukharans and, after the fall of the emir in 1920, became head of government of the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic. He went on to lead the government of Soviet Uzbekistan, until he was arrested in Stalin's purges, tried in Moscow and shot in 1938. The family house was confiscated and long neglected. Part of the museum tells his story, and the place where his life began becomes a quiet commentary on a whole era.

How to experience it

The museum reopened in 2023 after a full reconstruction. It lies in the residential lanes of the western part of the old town, so combine it with a walk through the quarter. Allow about an hour, and look up: the ceilings are the finest part.