Among the museum's exhibits is a meteorite weighing 820 kilograms, which fell near Konye-Urgench, alongside a piece of fossilised wood some 270 million years old. Here, the history of the planet sits alongside the history of the country, and that pairing is just as striking as the architecture of the complex itself.
The museum opened on 12 November 1998, becoming the first and largest of the 26 museums established during the years of Turkmenistan's independence. The three-storey complex covers around 15,000 square metres, with the main building crowned by a 16-sided blue dome — the number of facets symbolising the Turkic states founded by the ancestors of the Turkmen people.
Across seven thematic galleries, the museum holds more than 166,000 exhibits: artefacts from excavations at Nisa, Merv and Gonur, antique Turkmen carpets, jewellery, silver figurines from the Parthian era, and dinosaur footprints. A separate wing is dedicated to the history of the country's presidency.
