As impressive as the Palace of Nowruz is on its grand scale, the details are what impressed me the most. You really had to go slow, sit, look and appreciate the artistic craftsmanship that was done here. Again, some 4,000 artists and master crafts people worked here for five years constructing the palace and much of that had to be doing the detail work. I also understood that they used Tajik artists and Tajik materials so this palace is truly a Tajik work of art. The details are amazing. From the wood carving, mirror work, painted ceilings, all the wall art including the walls, marble floors, wood floors, carved stone work, plaster work, and everything else. WOW!

The first photo is a close-up in the banquet hall. You can see the impressive wood-carved staircase and second story wooden handrail. The painted ceilings were also very impressive. The walls were busy with all sorts of art work in many different styles and mediums.

If you remember the conference table in the second photo of the “halls” post, this second photo is a portion of the outer part of that same room. The conference table is to the right, inside the partial walls with arches. The third photo is also in this portion of the room. You can see Vicky sitting to take it all in. These chairs are functional chairs as this is not a museum but a working cultural and entertainment complex. The stone and wood work here was incredible.

The stone work was some of my favorite and you can see a close-up of some in the fourth photo. It’s all native Tajik stone. Clearly, the Tajikistan mountains contain a wide variety of stone.

I’ve saved the best for last, or at least my favorite. The last photo is of a wall painting, only it’s not painted. It’s about fifteen feet tall. This is all stone work and was done with all native stone. No painting here. And we were really lucky because our next stop after the palace was the ‘artists gallery’ and we actually got to meet the people that did this. Not only that, but because of our enthusiasm, they demonstrated their work for us and it was unbelievably impressive. They make these Florentine mosaics from local semi-precious stones. I will be doing a post on this when we get to the artist’s studio.