Samarkand Regional Museum of Local Lore (House-Museum of the Merchant Abram Kalantarov)

About

The museum opened in 1981 in the mansion built for the wealthy merchant Abram Kalantarov. The architect E. O. Nelle raised it in an eclectic style in the early twentieth century; it is now a protected monument, and half the pleasure of a visit is the house itself.

Local masters did the interiors — usto Kamol, usto Sadi, usto Hafiz. The formal mehmonkhona keeps its original decoration: a carved wooden ceiling painted in oils, layered ganch carving in the pardoz technique, panjara screens with coloured glass, and tiled stoves. The rooms run in an enfilade, one opening into the next.

The display has two departments. The historical one, on the ground floor, runs from Stone Age settlement and the rise of Sogdiana through the medieval centuries to the traditional culture, customs and rites of the region's peoples. One drawing room holds European Empire-style furniture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; by the museum's account it belonged to Napoleon, reached St Petersburg under Alexander I and was given to a courtier.

A separate exhibition, Jews of the Region Past and Present, covers the Yahudiyon quarter and the daily life, rites and religious objects of Bukharan Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, along with their contribution to regional culture.

The natural history department is among the strongest of its kind in Central Asia. It began with mounted birds and mammals donated by residents of the Turkestan region and later grew with botanical and entomological collections. One stand is given to the Zarafshan reserve and the Bukhara deer being restored there.