Almaty

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Almaty sits in the foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau mountains, in southern Kazakhstan, with the Big Almaty and Small Almaty rivers running through it. More than two million people live here, at an elevation between 700 and 900 metres. For most of the twentieth century this was the capital of Kazakhstan, holding that role from 1929 to 1991 and again until 1997, when it was moved to Astana. The ground beneath the city is restless. It lies in a tectonically active zone, and twice it was almost entirely flattened. There is also the matter of the name, which a disputed theory traces to the Kazakh word for apple. How did a frontier fort become Central Asia's intellectual heart? Why do its wild apple trees draw the attention of scientists? And what does a city build when it knows the earth may shake it apart?

• 2. Apple Mountain

  ›

  The name Almaty traces back to a medieval settlement called Almatau, which once stood near the present-day city. Almatau means "apple mountain". A disputed theory derives the name from the Kazakh word for apple, alma, and it is often translated as "full of apples". The former name, Alma-Ata, was read as "father of the apples". The Baburnama, written in the 16th century, mentions the place under the spelling Almatu. There is unusual genetic diversity among the wild apples in the surrounding region. The land west of the Tian Shan mountains is thought to be the apple's ancestral home. The wild Malus sieversii is considered a candidate for the ancestor of the modern domestic apple, and this tree figures in Almaty's culture to this day.

• 3. Ground That Shakes

  ›

  On the 28th of May 1887, at four in the morning, an earthquake almost destroyed the town then called Verny in eleven to twelve minutes. It killed 322 people and destroyed 1,798 brick houses. The destruction was not new to the region. Historical chronicles record a catastrophe at Almaty in 1807 and a strong earthquake in 1865, and an account from 1770 that a village was buried. On the 3rd of January 1911, the city was almost completely destroyed again, with over 770 brick buildings collapsing in what is known as the Kebin earthquake. The city sits near the base of the Zailiski Alatau, part of the North Tian-Shan ridge system. Engineers expect earthquakes here with magnitudes from 6.0 to 8.3. This is why the towers and housing blocks that followed were designed to survive a shaking the rest of the world rarely plans for.

• 4. From Fort To Capital

  ›

  Construction on Fort Zailiyskoe began on the 4th of February 1854, between the Bolshaya and Malenkaya Almatinka rivers, as Russia moved to control the region. It was a pentagonal wooden palisade, soon renamed Fort Vernoe, meaning "Loyal". By 1867 the surrounding settlement had grown enough to become a town, renamed Verny before the year was out. By 1906 the population had reached 27,000, two-thirds of them Russians and Ukrainians. Soviet power arrived in 1918, and on the 5th of February 1921 Verny was renamed Alma-Ata. The decisive turn came on the 29th of April 1927, when the government voted to move the capital of the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from Kyzyl-Orda to Alma-Ata. The Turkestan-Siberia Railway, approved in 1926, made this growth possible. By 1930, the highway and railway to the city were finished, and the airport opened, connecting Alma-Ata directly to Moscow.

• 5. Exiles And Intellectuals

  ›

  On the 31st of January 1928, Leon Trotsky, leader of the 1917 October Revolution, was exiled to Alma-Ata by Joseph Stalin. He arrived with his wife Natalia Sedova and his son Lev Sedov. By February 1929 he was expelled again, sent on to Turkey and later to Mexico City. Almaty became the historical capital of intellectualism in Kazakhstan, shaped both by its position along the Silk Road and by the many Russian intellectuals exiled to the region. During World War II, the government evacuated 26,000 people and numerous industries from the European theatre of war. Motion picture production companies from Leningrad, Kyiv, and Moscow were moved here. So many ethnic Russians arrived that the Kazakhs became a minority in the region. The Great Purge of 1936 to 1938 reached Kazakhstan, where numerous people were killed, and during the 1930s Kazakh nomads suffered starvation after their traditional living patterns were disrupted.

• 6. The City Of Records

  ›

  Medeu was built in 1972, fifteen kilometres from the city, in a mountain gorge of the same name. It sits at 1,691 metres above sea level, one of the highest skating rinks in the world. Its ice covers 10,500 square metres, kept frozen by pure mountain water free of salts. Skaters called Medeu "the factory of records", because 126 world records were set on its ice across 33 years. The supersonic Tupolev Tu-144 went into service on the 26th of December 1975, carrying mail and freight between Moscow and Alma-Ata before passenger services began in November 1977. The Ascension Cathedral, a 56-metre structure built in 1907 from blue Tien Shan spruce, withstood the 1911 earthquake that leveled so much else. Above the rink stands the Almaty Tower, the city's television tower, built between 1978 and 1983 at almost 372 metres and engineered to survive an earthquake of up to ten points.

• 7. Riot, Independence, And Air

  ›

  On the 16th of December 1986, the Jeltoqsan riot broke out in Brezhnev Square, now Republic Square, after General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev dismissed Dinmukhamed Kunayev. Exactly five years later, on the 16th of December 1991, Kazakhstan declared its independence from the Soviet Union. On the 28th of January 1993 the government renamed the city from the Russian Alma-Ata to the Kazakh Almaty. In 1997 President Nursultan Nazarbayev approved the decree moving the capital north to Astana. The Almaty Metro, begun on the 7th of September 1988, finally opened on the 1st of December 2011, after 23 years. Growth brought a heavy cost. In 1995, particulate emissions exceeded Kazakh and EU standards by over 20 times, and by 2008 Almaty ranked as the 9th most polluted city in the world. A 2013 study identified cars as a major source. An independent local air quality monitoring system with a mobile app launched in 2017.

• 8. Money And Mountains

  ›

  Almaty generates roughly 20 percent of Kazakhstan's GDP, accounts for about 20 percent of government revenues, and holds some 60 percent of the country's bank credits. It is home to Halyk Bank, the largest bank in Central Asia, along with Kaspi Bank and the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange. The Esentai Tower, a 37-floor building, is the tallest mixed-use building in Kazakhstan, housing offices for Ernst & Young, HSBC, and Credit Suisse, with the first Ritz-Carlton in the country opening there in 2013. The city's football club, FC Kairat, founded in 1954, made history by qualifying for the 2025-26 UEFA Champions League, only the second Kazakhstani club to do so. Almaty has reached for the largest stages too. It hosted the 2011 Asian Winter Games and the 2017 Winter Universiade, then bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics and lost to Beijing. The city may yet consider a bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics.