Travel Guide Nur-Sultan

Since 1998, Astana, a former Russian city of provincial garrison named Akmolinsk, has replaced Almaty as the capital of Kazakhstan. While its population has grown rapidly since 1998 reaching the 730,000 population, it still remains twice as crowded as its great sister Almaty. At the moment, it is mainly architecture that develops all the time. Astana is a city in the works, made of monumental but cold and still hopelessly empty perspectives. The capital seeks an architectural identity, and explores the Soviet tradition mixed with modern designs and materials as well as the Muslim tradition. The result leaves a little perplexed, but nevertheless deserves to be observed! Most of the projects under way will not be completed until 2020 or 2030, leaving the time to see the city evolve. At the moment, Astana is still clearly divided into two parts on both sides of the river. To the north, the Soviet city, rather gray and hardly attractive. To the south, the new city, with modern constructions, marble and gilding, shopping malls and towers higher than any other. Very active during the day, this part of Astana is present at night only to discover the city from a nocturnal point of view, taking advantage of the lighting highlighting the architectural follies of the president. In the beautiful days, it is still the southern part of the park, especially around the park, which houses a permanent carnival party or along the river, where beaches are very popular with the young people of Astana.From the point of view of cultural visits, only the President's museum is truly worth a detour. But the surroundings of Astana have many attractions: if you are not fascinated by the capital, you can always use it as a starting point to explore the surroundings…HistoryKnown as Akmola, «the white grave», Astana was founded in 1830. It was originally a cowardly fortress built by the Russian army during its progression to the south of the country. Incidentally, the fortress, located on the road of caravans from Tashkent and towards Moscow, was able to control part of the steppe trade.In the early 1960 s, the city, which had grown a little and had the ideal geographical location for the project, was designated as the center of the Virgin Lands Campaign, launched by Khrushchev. The city is then renamed Tselinograd, the city of Virgin Lands.It resumed its original name after independence until President Nazarbayev decided to move the capital of Almaty to Akmola in December 1997. The city is called Astana, which simply means «capital» in Kazakh.The decision to transfer the capital to the north seems to have been dictated by political and strategic imperatives. The first was to remove the administrative center from the southern borders of the country: Almaty is located less than fifty kilometers from Kyrgyzstan, and relatively close to China. Northern movement was also understood as a message to the Russian border provinces of Russia: the aim was to strengthen the government's grip on those predominantly populated regions of Russia, and broadly, economically and culturally, to the neighbor to the north.The new capital is still under construction, the new administrative and business districts are out of the ground. The administrations are reluctant to leave the comfort of Almaty to join this new city, and it must be recognized that the climate is particularly harsh. According to the government's program, all jurisdictions should have moved to Astana in 2030.The new capital status has led to a massive influx of people: the number of inhabitants doubled in Astana between 1998 and 2004, reaching 600 000 people. The pace then slowed somewhat, but the population will exceed the million inhabitants in 2020.The city therefore stretches at high speed, and the trend should not stop immediately, since many administrations have yet to be relocated from Almaty. The organization of the Universal Exhibition in 2017 gave new impetus to the city, with the opening of the Museum of National History and the Exhibition buildings.