The first thing you notice about Astana is that the horizon has been redesigned. Standing on the left bank of the Ishim River, you look south across a boulevard wider than some European runways, and every building seems to be competing for your attention. A 97-meter silver tree. A transparent tent large enough to hold a village. A glass pyramid that glows at dusk. This is not a city that grew organically. It is a city that was sketched by architects, approved by presidents, and dropped onto the Kazakh steppe 600 kilometers from the nearest ocean.
I came to Astana because no other capital on earth looks like this. The architecture is the entire reason to visit. The food is adequate. The nightlife is thin. The weather is hostile. But the buildings are genuinely extraordinary, and they tell a story about what happens when a young country with oil money decides to announce itself to the world.
The Left Bank: Where the Future Was Built
Nurzhol Boulevard runs for two kilometers along the river like a catwalk for buildings. Start at the northern end with Bayterek Tower, the city's defining landmark. It rises 97 meters in the form of a poplar tree cradling a golden egg, drawn from a Kazakh myth about the bird Samruk. The observation deck sits inside the egg at the top. Entry costs 1,500 tenge, about $3.20. The elevator is fast. The view is flat. The steppe stretches in every direction with almost nothing to interrupt it. The most photographed feature is the golden handprint of former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, set into a relief at the top. Visitors line up to place their own hand inside it. It is kitsch and oddly moving at the same time, a national creation myth rendered in metal and glass.
Walk south and the boulevard opens into a sequence of structures that read like an architecture firm's portfolio. The Kazakhstan Central Concert Hall, designed by Italian architect Manfredi Nicoletti, curves in white concrete like a flower or a shell, depending on the angle. The Palace of Independence sits nearby, a blue-glass wedge that hosts state events. The Kazakhstan National Museum is a blocky granite complex that looks defensive compared to the transparency around it. Entry is 700 tenge for the permanent exhibits, plus another 1,000 tenge if you want the Hall of Gold, which displays a replica of the Golden Man, the Scythian warrior buried in armor near Almaty. The museum is thorough but dimly lit. Budget two hours.
The most structurally audacious building on the boulevard is the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, a 62-meter glass pyramid designed by Norman Foster. It was built to host a congress of world religious leaders, and the concept is tolerance rendered in geometry. The pyramid contains an opera house, a museum, and a conference hall at the apex. From the outside, it looks impossibly delicate. From the inside, the glass panels frame the sky in triangles. It is open to visitors for a small fee, usually under 1,000 tenge, though hours shift with the political calendar. Check before you make the trip. The building works better as a photograph than as a public space. The atrium feels hollow during the week, and the museum inside is thin. But at dusk, when the internal lighting turns the entire pyramid into a lantern, it is one of the most striking structures in Central Asia.
Further south stands Khan Shatyr, another Foster project, and this one is even stranger. It is a 150-meter-high tent made of transparent ETFE panels stretched over a cable network. Inside, it houses a shopping mall, an amusement park, and an indoor beach club with imported sand and a temperature-controlled pool. The beach costs 5,000 tenge to enter, roughly $10.60. In January, when outside temperatures hit minus thirty, you can swim inside the tent while snow falls on the roof. The structural engineering is remarkable. The concept is absurd. Whether that makes it brilliant or grotesque depends on your tolerance for spectacle.
The Right Bank: Soviet Gravity vs. New Ambition
Cross the Ishim River and the tone changes. The left bank was built after 1997, when the capital moved from Almaty. The right bank still carries the weight of Soviet planning. Wide avenues. Prefab apartment blocks. The Astana Railway Station, functional and unloved. But even here, new architecture is creeping in.
The Hazrat Sultan Mosque opened in 2012 on the south side of the city and is the second largest in Central Asia. It holds 10,000 worshippers. The dome rises 51 meters, and the four minarets stand 77 meters tall. The scale is overwhelming. Entry is free, though women need to cover their heads and shoulders, and the mosque lends scarves for a 500 tenge deposit. The interior is calm and pale, with chandeliers the size of small cars. The architectural style is a blend of classical Islamic geometry and Kazakh ornament. It is more restrained than the left bank's theatricality, and honestly more successful.
The Grand Mosque of Astana, opened in 2022, surpassed it. It is now the largest mosque in Central Asia and among the largest in the world. The main dome is 83 meters in diameter and 62 meters high. The minarets reach 130 meters. The complex includes a library, a restaurant, and an observation deck in one of the minarets, accessible by elevator for 2,000 tenge. From the top, you see the full scope of the left bank's ambition laid out against the emptiness of the steppe. The contrast is the photograph every architecture journalist takes.
Expo 2017 and the Nur Alem Sphere
The Nur Alem Future Energy Museum is the legacy of Astana's hosting of Expo 2017. It is an 80-meter glass sphere, the world's largest spherical building, sitting on a plinth like a dropped marble. Inside, eight floors trace the history of energy, from solar to nuclear to kinetic. Entry is 1,500 tenge. The exhibition is earnest and multilingual. The building itself is the real attraction. The sphere is clad in double-curved glass panels that reflect the sky differently every hour. At sunset, it turns gold. At midday, it disappears into the haze. The engineering is by a consortium of Turkish and Kazakh firms, and the precision is undeniable. This is what Astana does best. It commissions buildings that would be impossible almost anywhere else, because no other city has this much space, this much budget, and this much willingness to experiment.
What the Cameras Miss
Astana is not a comfortable city. The wind on Nurzhol Boulevard in winter is cruel. The summer dust storms, called the yellow wind, turn the sky brown and fill your mouth with grit. The gaps between buildings are too wide to walk comfortably. The city was designed for cars and cameras, not pedestrians. You will take extraordinary photographs. You will also walk miles to find a cafe that is actually open.
The Green Bazaar, near the right bank, is the best antidote to the boulevard's sterility. It is a working market where locals buy lamb, horse sausage, and seasonal fruit. A bowl of lagman noodles costs 1,500 tenge. A skewer of shashlik from a busy stall costs 1,200 tenge. The vendors do not speak English. Pointing works. Cash is essential. Cards are useless here.
The city's most honest architecture might be the Soviet-era apartment blocks on the right bank, weathered and unloved, painted in faded pastels. They are not in the guidebooks. They tell the story of what existed before the capital arrived, and what still exists for most of the population. If you want to understand Astana, photograph the pyramid, but look at the balconies.
Practical Notes
Astana is now officially called Nursultan on some maps and documents, though locals increasingly use Astana again after the 2022 renaming reversal. The airport is 20 kilometers south of the city center. The light rail connects them every 15 minutes for 600 tenge. A taxi booked through Yandex Go costs 2,500 to 3,000 tenge. Taxis hailed at the terminal will quote double.
Public buses cost 180 tenge in cash or 150 tenge with an Onay card, sold at metro stations. The metro itself is limited to one line but useful for crossing the river quickly. Rush hour is crowded. Watch your pockets.
Hotels range from budget guesthouses at around $25 per night to international chains at $80 to $150. The Hilton Garden Inn and similar mid-range options sit between 35,000 and 50,000 tenge in summer, dropping to 14,000 tenge in January. Winter visits are cheap but severe. January temperatures regularly hit minus 25 Celsius.
The best months for photography are late April through May, when the steppe blooms and the light is clear, and September, when the heat breaks and the dust settles. Summer brings 30-degree days and harsh shadows. Winter brings blue skies and snow that reflects light upward, making midday exposures easier than you expect.
Kazakhstan allows visa-free entry for 30 days for most Western passport holders. Bring cash. Many small restaurants and all market vendors operate in paper tenge only. ATMs are widely available but notify your bank before travel.
If you are an architecture photographer, Astana is essential. If you are a casual traveler looking for charm, start in Almaty and come here for a day or two to gawk at the skyline. Either way, bring a wide-angle lens, a scarf for the mosque, and a tolerance for wind. The buildings are waiting. They have nothing but time.
By Yuki Tanaka
Architectural photographer based in Tokyo. Yuki captures the dialogue between ancient structures and modern design across Asia and Europe. Her work has been featured in Monocle, Dezeen, and Wallpaper. She sees buildings as frozen stories waiting to be told.