Buildings constructed in the European Art Nouveau style in Tashkent can be counted on one hand—all are well-known. Among them, and in Tashkent’s architecture in general, a special place is occupied by the palace of Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich Romanov, built in 1891 by architects V. S. Heinzelman and A. L. Benois. 

Exiled to Tashkent, the Grand Duke engaged in entrepreneurship and owned several enterprises in the city. He opened a soap factory, photographic studios, billiard halls, organized kvass sales, rice processing, and cotton manufactories. With funds earned from business, he built Tashkent’s first cinema—"Khiva"—and, using his own money, laid irrigation canals in the Hungry Steppe. 

The Grand Duke was a collector. His collection of European and Russian paintings, brought from St. Petersburg, formed the basis for the creation of the Tashkent Museum of Arts in 1919, which now boasts one of the richest collections of European painting among art museums in Central Asia. 

The memory of the Grand Duke in Tashkent is preserved by his palace, built from gray-yellow fired brick. The building is an elongated two-story structure with specially equipped basement living quarters where coolness was maintained even in the heat. The basement also housed a spacious kitchen. Round towers were built on the palace’s flanks, harmoniously integrated with the building’s architecture. 

On the grounds around the palace, the renowned Tashkent botanist and pharmacist I. I. Krause laid out a garden. At the building’s entrance stand dog sculptures, and on both sides of the staircase—bronze deer. 

The palace changed owners multiple times. Until the early 1990s, it housed the Republican Palace of Pioneers, the Museum of Antiques and Jewelry Art of Uzbekistan, and later the Reception House of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

In February 2020, the Ministry of Culture of Uzbekistan announced the opening of a museum in the palace following its reconstruction, the exact date of which has not yet been determined.