Astana City Guide - Boutique Hotels and the Best Restaurants, Bars and Clubs in Astana

Although many may tell you that there was ‘nothing’ here before Astana became the capital, the locals will avidly correct this. Archaeologists claim there was a Turkic settlement here as far back as the 8th-century, though its better-known history dates back to the Tsarist outpost established here in 1830. By the 1950s it had been renamed Tselinograd – otherwise known as the ‘Virgin Lands’ – a part of Kruschev’s ultimately doomed campaign to grow wheat on the Kazakh steppe (ironically, today it is these same ‘lands’ that make Kazakhstan one of the world’s leading wheat exporters). Before being the capital it was most recently called Akmola, and confusion as to what exactly this translated as – widely interpreted as the rather depressing ‘white tomb’ – meant that when it did become the capital in 1997, it was renamed yet again. This time named Astana, which simply means ‘capital’ in Kazakh, leaving no confusion about what this place is.

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