Nukus is the capital of Karakalpakstan, an autonomous republic that makes up the western third of Uzbekistan. It is a Soviet-built city in a flat, arid landscape, not conventionally attractive, but it houses one of the most remarkable art collections in Central Asia.
The Savitsky Museum holds tens of thousands of works of Russian and Central Asian avant-garde art from the 1920s and 1930s — paintings that were banned under Stalin and would have been destroyed had Savitsky not spent decades quietly acquiring them and bringing them to this remote city. The collection includes work by artists who were later executed or sent to the Gulag. It has been called the world's second-most important collection of Russian avant-garde art, after the Russian Museum in St Petersburg. The museum alone justifies a stop in Nukus.
The Nukus bazaar is a working Central Asian market of the old sort, less touristy than the famous bazaars of Samarkand or Bukhara, and the right place to find a taxi for excursions. South of the city, the Chilpik Tower of Silence is one of the best-preserved Zoroastrian funerary towers in Central Asia, standing above the Amu Darya with vast desert views. The main reason to base yourself here is as a staging point for Moynaq, the former Aral Sea port now stranded in desert — a haunting destination about 180 km north. Getting there requires hiring a taxi from the bazaar; there is technically a bus but it is infrequent and slow.