Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s capital, is home to one of the world’s most ornate subway systems. Many of its 29 stations are elaborately decorated with mosaics and chandeliers, the artwork reflecting a range of themes — from the Soviet space program to elements of local history, industry and agriculture.
Until recently, though, it was mostly hidden from the outside world.
For decades, taking photographs inside Tashkent’s subway stations was strictly prohibited, ostensibly as a matter of national security. But among the recent reforms made by President Shavkat M. Mirziyoyev, who took office in 2016, was the lifting of the ban on photography within the metro.
The Tashkent Metro, which opened in 1977, is one of only two subways in operation in Central Asia. (The other is in Almaty, Kazakhstan.) Trains run from 5 a.m. until midnight, and a single ride costs 1,400 som, or about 15 cents.
Several of Tashkent’s metro stations were renamed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with references to Soviet-era figures and ideals giving way to a celebration — and reclamation — of Uzbek history.
The October Revolution Station, for example, was recast to honor Amir Timur, the 14th-century Central Asian military leader. Maxim Gorky station, originally named after the founding father of Soviet literature, became the Great Silk Road Station. (The Uzbek cities of Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara were once important waypoints on the Silk Road.)
Still, remnants of Soviet ideology remain. Kosmonavtlar (“Cosmonauts”) Station honors, among others, Yuri Gagarin, above, the first man in space, and Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space — both enduring Soviet icons.
Inside Pakhtakor (“Cotton Worker”) Station, above, the walls are adorned with mosaics representing cotton capsules.
Uzbekistan ranks among the world’s leading producers of cotton, though the industry is still fraught with controversy. Only recently has the Uzbek government started to address the forced labor of doctors, students, teachers and others during the annual harvest.
In Alisher Navoi Station, above, geometrically domed ceilings and floral motifs call to mind the designs of Tashkent’s many mosques and madrassas.
Islam is the country’s dominant religion. And while the Jewish population has declined significantly since the early 1970s, Uzbekistan has long been praised as a place where Jews and Muslims coexist peacefully.
Above, commuters pass by a portrait of Alisher Navoi, a widely admired poet, while a security camera monitors the area.
Built in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in 1966, the Tashkent Metro was the seventh subway constructed within the Soviet Union. (To Soviet leaders, subways were an amalgam of transportation hubs, propaganda platforms and communal luxuries. “We thought of a subway,” Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs, “as something almost supernatural.”)
Unlike certain other Soviet-era metro systems, Tashkent’s is relatively shallow, though stairs and escalators still lead descending commuters past mosaics, murals and reliefs, as above.
A sprawling metropolis, Tashkent once served as the Soviet military’s main outpost — as well as a bureaucratic hub — in Central Asia. From a city center that showcases ancient Islamic architecture, the city stretches outward to encompass large swaths of Soviet-era apartment buildings.
For decades, Uzbekistan was largely closed off to most travelers, first as a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, and later under a dictator, Islam Karimov, whose 27-year reign ended in 2016. The country experienced a few years of extraordinary openness in the 1990s, when, in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, foreign journalists and companies based themselves in Tashkent, and foreign tourists found their way there, too. But that opening slowly contracted, closing altogether in 2005 after a massacre at a political protest in the city of Andijan.
Still, doubts about Mr. Mirziyoyev’s motives — and the extent of his plans for reform — continue to swirl. And more than a year after the ban on photography in the metro was lifted, the move has posed a lingering question that’s emblematic of the country’s larger concerns: Was this a publicity stunt aimed at showcasing the country’s beauty and drawing in tourists, or was it a telling indication of consequential change?