Kazakhstan
Astana
A capital conjured out of the steppe in a single generation, and one of the coldest cities anyone has ever chosen to govern from.
Kazakhstan took a Soviet steppe town called Tselinograd and, from 1997, built a capital on the near-empty left bank of the Esil: a ceremonial axis of ministries, museums and set-piece towers laid out inside thirty years. Bayterek, the golden-orb tower at its centre, and Norman Foster's tented Khan Shatyr are the images that travel. It is also one of the coldest capitals on earth, a fact the architecture is visibly designed around.
Suggested stay
2–4 days
Language
Kazakh, Russian
Currency
KZT
Timezone
UTC+5
Why you'll love Astana
The axis Ministries, museums and Bayterek line up along one pedestrian boulevard, so the whole commissioned capital reads as a single deliberate composition you can walk end to end.
Architecture Foster, Kurokawa and Nicoletti all built here, which is why a young steppe city carries a pyramid, a vast tent and a concert hall shaped like petals.
Two cities Cross the river and the glass ends - the right bank is the Soviet town of Tselinograd, with low blocks, shaded park benches and everyday canteens.
The steppe Flat grassland starts where the suburbs stop, and it carries you out to flamingo lakes, Gulag ground and a granite-and-pine range.
Best time to visit
May-Sep
Mild & green · 19-27° days
51.128° N, 71.431° E
UTC+5 · Asia/Almaty
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Weather & when to go to Astana
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best May-Sep
Conditions Jan-Feb Extreme cold · Mar Cold · Apr Windy thaw · May Mild & green · Jun-Jul Warm · Aug Warm & dry · Sep Cool & clear · Oct-Nov Cold · Dec Extreme cold
Watch for Dec-Feb extreme cold risk
Cards tinted by verified verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Astana
Deep winter is the real barrier: steppe wind turns an already-brutal cold into something that limits how long anyone stands outdoors, and sightseeing becomes dashes between heated interiors. The city is built for exactly that - tented and covered public space, a long indoor season of hockey and theatre - so winter is workable, just never comfortable.
Top things to do in Astana
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Bayterek Tower - ride the axis landmark
culture arts scenic 👍 PopularThe city's signature tower: a white lattice trunk holding a golden orb, raised to a height that nods to the year the capital moved. The observation deck looks straight down Nurzhol Boulevard to the Ak Orda presidential palace, which is the clearest way to understand how the whole left bank was composed.
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Nurzhol Boulevard - walk the ceremonial axis
culture arts scenic 👍 PopularThe pedestrian spine running between Khan Shatyr and the Ak Orda, lined with ministries, fountains, arcades and sculpture. Walking it end to end in one go is the single best way to feel the scale and the deliberateness of the place, and it is where the city comes out in the evening.
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Khan Shatyr - Foster's tent over the steppe
culture arts shopping 👍 PopularNorman Foster's translucent tent, pitched at the end of the boulevard and tall enough to swallow a stadium. Inside is a shopping centre with an indoor beach and waterpark under the peak, a slightly surreal answer to a climate that spends months well below freezing.
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Palace of Peace and Reconciliation - the glass pyramid
culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedAnother Foster building, a pyramid raised for the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions. An opera hall sits in the base, a garden in the middle and a meeting chamber at the apex under stained-glass doves - the most legible piece of the capital's symbolism.
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National Museum of Kazakhstan - the Golden Man and the steppe
history culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedA vast marble museum on the axis, running from Bronze Age steppe cultures and Saka goldwork - including the Golden Man's scale armour - through nomadic ethnography to a whole hall about the building of this city. Easily half a day if the archaeology holds you.
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Hazrat Sultan Mosque - white stone and blue domes
culture arts historyOne of the largest mosques in Central Asia, in white stone with blue tilework and Kazakh ornament, facing the pyramid across the axis. Non-Muslim visitors are generally welcome outside prayer times, dressed modestly.
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Nur Alem - the EXPO sphere
culture artsA glass globe billed as the world's largest spherical building, left from the EXPO on future energy and now a museum that works upward through wind, solar and space floors to a view over the southern edge of the city.
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Astana Opera - a night in the marble house
culture arts nightlife musicThe capital's opera and ballet theatre, a colonnaded pile on the left bank whose company programmes Kazakh works alongside the standard repertoire. The indoor season is long here for obvious reasons, and seats are far easier to come by than in most capitals.
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Kenesary street - the right bank's walking strip
food culture artsThe old city's pedestrian stretch, where Tselinograd's low blocks, everyday cafes and street trade carry on much as they did. The counterweight to the left bank, and the easier side to eat beshbarmak and laghman without ceremony.
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Barys Arena - hockey through the cold months
The city's Kontinental Hockey League side plays through the depths of winter to a full house, and it is the most straightforward way to spend a freezing evening among locals rather than in a mall. The other winter habit is skating, on rinks that appear across both banks.
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Atameken - Kazakhstan laid out in miniature
culture arts scenicAn open-air scale map of the country, with its cities, monuments and landscapes modelled at knee height. Genuinely useful as orientation before you travel further, and it makes the sheer size of Kazakhstan legible in a way a flat map does not.
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Duman - an oceanarium a long way from the sea
nature wildlifeA right-bank entertainment complex whose aquarium is routinely described as the furthest in the world from any ocean, its seawater mixed on site. A curiosity rather than a must, and a dependable frozen-day option with children.
Best areas to stay in Astana
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Left Bank (Yesil)
First-time visitors $$$Monumental new capital, glass and boulevards
Explore hotels in Left Bank (Yesil) →
Right Bank (old Tselinograd)
Everyday city $$Soviet low-rise, parks and everyday streets
Explore hotels in Right Bank (old Tselinograd) →
EXPO and AIFC quarter
Business travellers $$$Glassy expo campus and finance towers
Explore hotels in EXPO and AIFC quarter →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Astana
Getting to & around Astana
Getting there
Fly into Astana (NQZ), about 17 km southeast of the centre, or arrive by overnight train from Almaty into Nurly Zhol station.
Flight
Astana International Airport (NQZ)
About 17 km southeast of the centre; city buses run in to both banks and a taxi takes roughly 20-30 minutes, longer in snow. The terminal is by Kisho Kurokawa, who also drew the city's master plan.
Train
Nurly Zhol station
The main left-bank station, with overnight Talgo services from Almaty and long-distance trains across the steppe.
Train
Astana-1 station
The older right-bank station, still handling part of the long-distance timetable.
Coach
Intercity coaches and shared cars arrive from Karagandy, Kokshetau and Pavlodar; check which terminal your service uses.
Drive
The country's main north-south highway links the city to Almaty far to the south and to the northern border crossings.
Getting around
Walking
The left-bank axis is walkable, but blocks are monumental and distances longer than they look.
TBC
Bus
The city's mass transit, crossing both banks; many shelters are enclosed against the cold.
TBC
Taxi and ride-hailing
Apps dominate, and are the default for crossing between the two banks once it is cold.
TBC
Bike share
Docked bikes along the river and boulevard, useful in the warm months and absent in winter.
TBC
Day trips from Astana
ALZHIR Memorial Museum, Akmol
Half dayGulag memorial
The Akmolinsk Camp for Wives of Traitors of the Motherland held thousands of women whose husbands had been shot or imprisoned in the purges, along with their children. The memorial is a dark narrowing arch on open steppe, with a watchtower and a cattle wagon beside it, and it is the most affecting thing near the city.
Getting there
car | bus | tour
About 40 minutes west by car, tour or local bus to Akmol
Korgalzhyn Nature Reserve
Full daySteppe lakes and flamingos
A UNESCO-listed piece of the Saryarka wetlands where the world's northernmost flamingos breed on Lake Tengiz, alongside pelicans and steppe birds on the migration flyway. It only works in the warm half of the year - the lakes freeze, the birds leave, and the tracks in go soft after rain.
Getting there
car | tour
Roughly 2.5-3 hours each way by car or tour, southwest of the city
Burabay (Borovoe) National Park
1-2 daysLakes and granite hills
Kazakhstan's answer to a hill station: pine forest, granite outcrops and a chain of clear lakes rising out of flat steppe. Okzhetpes rock and the Zhumbaktas islet in Lake Burabay are the postcard, and the resort strip is where much of the country goes to swim, walk and eat shashlik.
Getting there
car | bus | train | tour
About 3-4 hours north by car, coach or train to the Burabay resort station
Karagandy and the Dolinka camp museum
Full dayCoal city and Gulag museum
Karagandy was built on coal by deported labour, and the KarLag administration building at Dolinka outside it is now a museum of the camp system that ran across this steppe. A long day from the capital, and a bleaker, more industrial companion piece to ALZHIR.
Getting there
train | car | tour
About 2.5-3 hours south by train or car
A little history of Astana
Astana began in 1830 as a Russian fortress on the Ishim, grew into the district town of Akmolinsk, and spent the 20th century being repurposed by whoever governed it. In the Stalin years the surrounding steppe carried camps, including the women's camp at Akmol; in 1954 Khrushchev's Virgin Lands campaign ploughed the grassland for grain and made the town its headquarters, renaming it Tselinograd - 'virgin lands city' - in 1961.
Independent Kazakhstan renamed it Akmola in 1992, then moved the capital here from Almaty in 1997, away from the seismic south and closer to the Russian-speaking north. A master plan by the Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa set the ceremonial axis on the left bank, and a generation of commissioned buildings followed. The name has changed twice more since: to Nur-Sultan in 2019, after the long-serving first president stepped down, and back to Astana in 2022.
Founded as a Russian fortress on the Ishim, later the town of Akmolinsk.
The ALZHIR camp opens at nearby Akmol for the wives and children of purged men.
The Virgin Lands campaign ploughs the surrounding steppe for grain.
Renamed Tselinograd, centre of the Soviet Virgin Lands Krai.
Renamed Akmola in newly independent Kazakhstan.
The capital moves here from Almaty.
Renamed Astana, and a Kurokawa master plan sets out the left-bank axis.
EXPO leaves the Nur Alem sphere and a financial-centre quarter south of the axis.
Renamed Nur-Sultan, then back to Astana.
Know before you go
Payment
Cards & cash mixed
English
Limited
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+7
Extreme cold risk in this window; check current conditions before you go.
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
FAQs about Astana
▸ When is the best time to visit Astana?
The warm half of the year is the straightforward answer: the boulevard, the river and the steppe day trips all need it. Spring and autumn are short and can swing hard either way, and the long winter is a season you plan around rather than plan for.
▸ Is Astana worth it, or should I just go to Almaty?
They answer different questions. Almaty has the mountains, the trees and the older social life; Astana is a designed capital you read as architecture and statecraft. Two or three days here is plenty, and doing both, with the overnight train between them, is how most people see Kazakhstan.
▸ How cold does it actually get?
Genuinely extreme. This is usually ranked the second-coldest capital city in the world after Ulaanbaatar, with long spells below freezing, deep sub-zero nights and a steppe wind that removes whatever margin is left. Locals dress for it seriously and visitors underestimate it constantly.
▸ Is there any reason to come in the cold months?
A few real ones. The commissioned skyline under snow and floodlight is its own spectacle, the river and ponds freeze hard enough to skate, and the indoor season of hockey, opera and the tented waterpark is when the city is busiest at night. It is a trade, not a secret bonus.
▸ Do I need to register on arrival?
Kazakhstan has historically required foreign visitors to be registered shortly after arrival, though hotels normally handle it and the rules have been relaxed repeatedly. Confirm the current position before you travel rather than assuming: it is the one piece of admin that catches people out.
▸ Is English widely spoken?
Less than you would expect in a capital. Kazakh and Russian do the work, with Russian still the everyday language of the street. Younger people around the universities and the finance quarter often have English, and left-bank signage is frequently trilingual, but a translation app earns its place.
More in Kazakhstan
Aktau
A Soviet oil city with no street names, and behind it the chalk canyons and cliff-cut mosques of the Mangystau desert.
✓ best Apr-OctAlmaty
A city of apple orchards and long cafe lunches with a 4,000 m mountain range at the end of the street - and ski lifts inside the city limits.
✓ best Apr-Jun, Sep-OctTurkistan
Kazakhstan's holiest building and its first World Heritage site: Timur's unfinished masterpiece, still a working shrine rather than a monument.
✓ best Mar-May, Sep-Oct