Almaty
Nestled in the foothills of the Zhailiskii Alatau Mountains, part of the great Tien Shan range, which cross Central Asia from east to west, Almaty’s location is its greatest asset. The natural mountain scenery provides both a dramatic backdrop and easily accessible playground for the city’s one and a half million residents.
In its present form, Almaty (which translates as ‘Grandfather of the Apples’, in reference to Almaty’s numerous fruit-bearing orchards) was established in the mid-nineteenth century when the Russians built a fort at Verniy near the site of a long-established nomadic settlement. As the Russian intent in Central Asia changed from protection to colonization, a small town was established adjacent to the fort.
Subsequent development in the Soviet period turned Almaty (then Alma-Ata) into a thriving capital city with some of its most impressive buildings emerging under the leadership of Dinmukhamed Kunayev, first secretary of Kazakhstan’s Communist Party from 1959 to 1986.
In 1997, six years after Kazakhstan gained independence, President Nazarbayev announced his decision to move the capital to Astana in northern Kazakhstan. One of the reasons he cited for leaving was Almaty’s location on a major earthquake faultline. Many thought that the move of the capital would prove a death knell for Almaty, but instead the city’s popularity has continued to grow and it is now set to become the regional financial hub for all of Central Asia as well as being the country’s business and cultural centre. The enormous oil, gas and natural resource wealth enjoyed by Kazakhstan has fuelled massive development in this former capital and led to the rise of a new class of Kazakh, the novii Kazakh, who all keep flats in Almaty and return here to party at the weekends.
The development has had its side effects: real estate values have shot through the roof, and it is often as expensive to rent a flat in central Almaty as in London or New York. The knock-on effect of this is that bars, restaurants and shops come and go. High rents mean that many struggle to stay open or are forced to move to new locations and so turnover is high, as are prices.
Development aside, Almaty is an extremely pleasant and laid back town to spend time in. A Tsarist horticulturalist named Edward Baum who lived in Almaty at the end of the nineteenth century inspired a generation of Almaty’s citizens to plant trees, a legacy continued throughout the Soviet period. As a result, when spring arrives, the city comes into bloom almost overnight and walking through its many parks, and along its streets, you sometimes feel you are in a flower-strewn forest rather than a city.
To really appreciate Almaty’s stunning setting, take the cable car to Koktubey, a small hill dominated by a TV tower on the city’s south-eastern edge. The cable-car terminal is just behind the Palace of the Republic on Dostyk. From the top, you get a magnificent view of the mountains to the south of the city, of the city itself and of the steppe, which stretches endlessly to the north, unbroken until it reaches Siberia.
A word of warning: the mountains in Almaty lie to the south of the city, not the north; this is often confusing when trying to orientate yourself and useful to bear in mind.
Astana
Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, is situated over 1,000km to the northwest of Almaty in the middle of the steppe. Founded as a Russian military outpost in 1824, in 1868 the outpost was expanded, becoming an administrative centre named Akmolinsk.
In the 1950s the city became Tselinograd (City of the Virgin Lands), centre of Kruschev’s ultimately doomed campaign to grow wheat on the Kazakh steppe. At this time it developed into a small urban centre, home to many of the thousands of Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians who came to work the ‘Virgin Lands’. After Kazakhstan gained its independence in 1991, the city was renamed Akmola, changing once again to Astana (meaning ‘capital’ in Kazakh) in 1997 during the transfer of the capital from Almaty.
The reasons for the move are much debated, with theories ranging from a desire to establish a more Kazakh presence in the slav- dominated north of the country, to wanting to move away from earthquake-prone Almaty. What is certain, however, is that the new capital has given the government an opportunity to create a monumental capital – a symbol of Kazakhstan’s growing importance in the world economy, with its natural resource wealth reflected in the city’s many mirrored skyscrapers. If you fly in to Astana, the city rears up out of nowhere, its shiny skyscrapers a stark contrast to the vast emptiness of the surrounding steppe.
Designed, in part, according to a masterplan by renowned Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa, the old city of Astana sits to the north of the River Ishim (Esil in Kazakh) while new Astana is under construction on the Left Bank, to the south of this river. With Astana’s oil-fed construction boom, the population has more than doubled to 600,000 since the capital’s move, and is expected to reach one million by 2030 – a significant date in Kazakhstan’s long-term development strategy.
The many businessmen and officials who have made the city their home did not universally welcome the move to Astana. With temperatures reaching –40ºC during the long winter months compounded by strong steppe winds, many residents still enjoy returning to Almaty at the weekends.
In many ways, however, Astana has achieved its goal of cementing a Kazakh-dominated national identity for this young nation. Walk along the new city’s central boulevard and you will find yourself surrounded by local tourists who have come from other parts of the country to wonder at their new place in the world.
With the official move of all the embassies from Almaty to Astana by the end of 2006, the pace of new construction and the availability of new services have accelerated. In fact, it is hard to keep up to date as new restaurants, bars and nightclubs open every week. This growth is a positive development with an increase in available services leading to a much greater choice. Astana is not yet a hedonists’ paradise, but watch this space.
Business District
It may not sound like the natural territory of the hedonist, but the new Business District, home to much of the development taking place in Almaty, is also home to some of the city’s main hotels, clubs, cafés and restaurants, so don’t judge it on name alone.
The Business District comprises various microdistricts that fall outside the centralized grid pattern of Almaty, making the area seem, at times, confusing. The area is bordered to the east by the Malaya Almatinka (Little Almaty) River and to the west by the Bolshaya Almatinka (Big Almaty) River. These rivers descend from the mountains above the town eventually flowing into Lake Kapchagai and the Ili River in the steppe.
A walk along the banks of the Malaya Almatinka provides a welcome break from city life. Start behind the Arman Cinema on Dostyk and Abai, where the river flows along a concrete channel, but quickly the river returns to its natural environs as the path winds past gnarled trees, large boulders and the flower-filled gardens of Almaty residents.
Alternatively, follow the northern boundary of the Business District, on Abai, one of the city’s main axes, and home to the Soviet-built Circus, which looks similar to a giant white spinning top, and the Wedding Palace which, like the circus, was an institution in Soviet society – where else could people get married once all the religious buildings had become museums?
Today it is a tradition following the wedding cermony to make a photographic tour of Almaty’s main monuments with your whole wedding entourage, usually in a cavalcade of white limousines bedecked with flowers, horns blaring, and occasionally with a lone video camera operator filming the whole spectacle from the sunroof of the car in front. One of the most popular spots for these nuptial photo shoots is the Monument of Independence in Almaty’s Republican Square, a column which competes with Trafalgar Square’s Nelson in height, on top of which stands a statue of The Golden Man – a Scythian warrior unearthed just 60km east of Almaty and now a proudly touted symbol of Kazakhstan’s rich nomadic ancestry.
On the south-east corner of this square you will find the Central State Museum, an interesting place to update your knowledge of local history, before having lunch at either Vogue Café or Le Jardin on Satpaev. If you naturally gravitate to Vogue, then this end of Satpaev is the place to do some serious shopping for designer clothes – check out Sauvage on the corner of Dostyk and Bureau 1985.
Heading south again and then west on Al-Farabi, you will enter the heart of Almaty’s new financial centre – an ambitious project to make Almaty the new regional financial capital. The developers, Capital Partners, who developed the Ritz Carlton in Moscow, have invited world-renowned architects to work on the area’s design. By early 2008 the area will be home to the JW Marriott Esentai, which is set to become Almaty’s most exclusive address.
Al-Farabi Avenue and the Esentai River (a tributary of the Malaya Almatinka River) mark the southern boundary of the business district. Cross them and you will enter into a world of small wooden houses and orchards, which are vying with the developers for their right to exist.
Central Almaty
The central area of Almaty is the city’s historic centre, a monument to Tsarist and Soviet town planning and seemingly unaffected by the massive development which is taking place to the south of the city. Established on a grid system, central Almaty is easy to navigate and a great place to walk thanks to the wide avenues, tree-lined streets and roadside parks, complete with fountains and statues. As you walk you will notice, and occasionally have to negotiate, wide gutters or aryks, which divert water from the city’s three main rivers for irrigation as well as acting as storm drains in wet weather.
The northern end of central Almaty is dominated by the blue-domed Central Mosque to the east, the bustling Green (Zelony) Bazaar in the centre – perhaps the most Central Asian experience in town and a great place to pop into for a bowl of green tea – and the Arbat or pedestrian street running west of the bazaar along Zhibek Zholy. This name translates as Silk Road and is a destination for street artists, families and a good place to watch the mix of Almaty life.
To the southeast of the Arbat on Kunayev Street is the Arasan Banya, the central public bathhouse. These magnificent baths are the perfect place to relax after a night of hedonism, or perhaps a good place to scrub up before going out.
Right opposite the baths you will find the rectangular Panfilov Park, at the centre of which is the city’s main cathedral – a remarkable piece of pastel-coloured wooden architecture from the Tsarist period, reputed to have been built without the use of a single nail.
Running south of the Park on the eastern side of the central area is Dostyk, formerly Lenin Avenue and Almaty’s main street, which climbs uphill towards the landmark tower of Hotel Kazakhstan. Walk just beyond the hotel to see the Palace of the Republic, a Soviet building now used mainly for concerts whose golden eaves have a definite feel of the Orient about them.
To the west of Hotel Kazakhstan, along Kurmangazy, you will find the Academy of Sciences – a huge neoclassical edifice with Islamic touches which was built in the 1950s in the grand Stalinist style, and designed by the famous Moscow architect, Alexey Shchusev.
From the Academy of Sciences, it is well worth strolling down any of the following small streets: Valikhanov, Tulebaev or Baisetov – beautiful in summer or winter and devoid of the traffic of the larger streets which run from north to south. As you walk you will notice plaques on the sides of buildings commemorating well-known figures – artists, writers, politicians and scientists – who lived there during Soviet times.
A walk down Baisetov Street (four streets to the west of the Academy of Sciences) will bring you to the Abai Opera and Ballet Theatre, another highly attractive neo-classical building which, on a good day, with the mountains in the background, is one of Almaty’s most iconic sights. If all this walking has exhausted you, pop into L’Affiche, the café facing the Opera House, another of Almaty’s gems.
Left Bank
Astana’s Left Bank represents the heart of President Nazarbayev’s vision for his new republic. Almost entirely built since the move of the capital to Astana in 1997, the on going construction on the Left Bank is both relentless and monumental.
The Left Bank is dominated by the 100-metre wide Central Boulevard which stretches for over a mile between Kazakhstan’s two axes of power – the building of the state oil and gas company, KazMunaiGas, in the west and the Presidential Palace in the east, taking in the Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs, the National Library, Parliament and the Courts of Justice on the way.
In 2006, the main axis was further extended with the positioning of Norman Foster’s new Palace of Peace and Reconciliation across the river from the Presidential Palace, and the initial stages of construction of another Foster commission – a giant indoor tent, Khan Shatyr – to the west of KazMunaiGas. These two structures, both of which will have been built in record time, look set to be the architectural highlights of the new city, along with Manfredi Nicoletti’s boat-shaped concert hall, currently also under construction.
To really appreciate the scale of the building work, walk to the middle of the Central Boulevard and ascend to the top of Baiterek or the ‘tree of life’ – a large glass sphere perched atop a 100-metre-tall tower representing the Kazakh national myth of a golden egg laid by the legendary Kazakh bird Samruk. From this vantage point, you can see the scale of Astana’s construction, as cranes and skyscrapers rise all around you – a frenetic contrast to the emptiness of the surrounding steppe.
Due to open in the autumn of 2008, Foster’s second commission in Astana, Khan Shatyr – a giant indoor city with its own beach made with solar-trapping materials – looks set to become a year-round paradise for sun-worshipping hedonists: even when it is –30ºC on the snow-covered steppe outside.
Other buildings of note on the Left Bank are the central mosque, funded by a Qatar-based prince, the circus on Kabanbai Batyr, whose circular form is reminiscent of a UFO, and, just behind this, the huge neo-Stalinist style residential ‘Triumph’ tower – an interesting style of construction in an area which was the location for some of Stalin’s most notorious gulags in the 1940s and 50s on the steppe outside the city.
With the city on the Left Bank springing out of the steppe, street names have not necessarily kept up, and you will find that many of the streets here are numbered rather than named.
Amid all the construction, new green spaces are also being developed, the most obvious being the city’s central park, which lies to the south of the River Ishim and is home to an aqua park, an amusement park for children, a roller coaster and even Astana’s very own ‘Eye’.
Right Bank
Situated to the north of the River Ishim, Astana’s Right Bank (the old town) is a mix of Tsarist buildings, Soviet blocks and modern skyscrapers. The rate of construction here is as fast-paced as on the Left Bank, although less dominating, thanks to an already developed city centre.
The Right Bank is bordered by the Ishim River to the south, which was widened in the 1960s by the creation of a dam to create a more substantial river frontage. A walk along the embankment is a pleasant experience: in the summer, you can watch residents canoe along the river or take a ride in antiquated paddle boats; in winter the river is the heart of the city once more as men sit fishing on the ice, and inhabitants dig out their cross-country skis and slide along the snow-covered ice. It is even possible to join in by hiring a pair of skis and boots at one of the small kiosks on the riverbank.
At the southwest corner of the Right Bank, where Sary Arka Avenue crosses the river, the newly built Radisson Hotel looks out over the water towards new Astana. One of the city’s best hotels, the Radisson couldn’t be better located for nocturnal hedonists for the simple reason that Chocolate – Astana’s best nightclub – is located in the same building.
From the Radisson, walk along Sary Arka, turn east up Abai Street and you will reach the heart of the Right Bank, passing by the post-independence Ministry of Finance, built in the shape of a dollar, and the Museum of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, President Nazarbayev’s residence until he moved to the Left Bank in 2001. Further up Abai you will come to the Old Square, dominated by the Ministry of Tourism at one end and the Congress Hall at the other. You will also find Tsum here, the central state shop recently renamed Sine Tempore Shopping Mall. Also situated on the Old Square is the Grand Park Esil Hotel, an attractive 19th century building which is perfectly located for people who prefer to stay in the old town.
Two blocks east of the Old Square, Respublik Prospect runs from the river northwards and is the backbone of the Right Bank, home to the President’s Cultural Centre, the small but worthwhile Museum of Modern Art and a number of Astana’s restaurants and bars.
Walk around the Right Bank and among the newer buildings you will discover shuttered wooden houses with intricate wooden fretwork hanging from their windows – the most notable of which is the Seifullin Museum at the intersection of Seifullin and Auezov streets.
One important thing to be aware of is that many of the streets in the old town have had their numbering system redesignated. Don’t be surprised to find that number 80 is now number 32. We have used the new numbers, which correspond with the numbers you will see attached to the newer signs.
