Last updated: July 2026 · Written by the Kazakhstan Tourism Guide editorial team
The first time you stand on Nurzhol Boulevard, it is genuinely hard to know where to look. There is a translucent tent the size of a stadium at one end, a golden egg balanced on a white stalk in the middle, and a glass pyramid glinting across the river. Almost none of it existed thirty years ago, and that is exactly the point.
Astana architecture is the deliberately futuristic skyline of Kazakhstan’s capital, built almost from scratch after 1997 to a masterplan by the Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa. Its signature pieces — Norman Foster’s Khan Shatyr tent and glass pyramid, the golden Bayterek tower, and the Nur-Alem sphere — line a single ceremonial axis you can walk end to end in an afternoon.
I have walked that axis in shirtsleeves in July and in a down jacket with my eyelashes freezing in January, and both times it felt less like a city and more like a giant open-air model of what a capital could be. Below is how I would tackle it as a self-guided walking tour, building by building, with the architects, the heights, the walking times, and the honest trade-offs. If you are still sketching out a wider trip, this pairs naturally with our guide to things to do in Astana.
Astana’s architecture at a glance
| Building | Architect / year / what to know |
|---|---|
| Khan Shatyr Entertainment Center | Norman Foster / Foster + Partners, 2010. A masted, cable-net “tent” about 150 m tall — the highest point on the skyline and, per Guinness, the world’s tallest tensile structure. Shops, a park, a monorail and a warm indoor beach inside. |
| Palace of Peace and Reconciliation (the Pyramid) | Norman Foster, 2006. A 62 m glass pyramid on a 62×62 m base. Stained-glass doves at the apex by Brian Clarke; a roughly 1,300-seat opera house below. |
| Bayterek (Baiterek) Tower | Opened 2002. Golden observation sphere at 97 m — a nod to the 1997 capital move. Concept credited to President Nazarbayev; architect Akmurza Rustembekov. Not a Foster building. |
| Ak Orda Presidential Palace | Opened 2004. The president’s working residence: white-marble facade and a blue-and-gold dome about 80 m high, crowned by a sun and steppe eagle. |
| Nur-Alem sphere | Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, 2017. Roughly 80 m across and 100 m tall over eight floors — billed as the world’s largest spherical building. Now the Museum of Future Energy. |
| Astana Grand Mosque | Architects Dewan, 2022. The largest mosque in Central Asia: four 130 m minarets, a main dome about 83 m tall, and capacity near 235,000 including the grounds. |
| Hazrat Sultan Mosque | Opened 2012. Capacity around 10,000; central dome 51 m; four 77 m minarets. White marble with Kazakh ornament, on Independence Square. |
| Emerald Towers & golden “beer can” towers | The tilting green-glass Emerald Towers (2012) are among the country’s tallest; the twin gold conical House of Ministries towers are locally nicknamed the “beer cans.” |
Why Astana looks like nowhere else
To understand the skyline, you have to understand the decision behind it. In 1997 Kazakhstan moved its capital roughly 1,200 km north, from leafy Almaty near the mountains to a small provincial city on the flat, cold steppe. The official reasons ranged from seismic safety to room to grow to planting the flag in the middle of the country. Whatever the mix, the result was a rare thing in the modern world: a national capital being built more or less from a blank page.
In 1998 a competition to plan that page was won by Kisho Kurokawa, a Japanese architect from the Metabolist movement, which imagined cities as living things that grow and adapt. Kurokawa laid the new center out along the Ishim River (the Esil, in Kazakh) and treated it as an organism that could keep extending down a central spine. That spine is the axis you are about to walk.
Then there is the weather, which shaped everything. Astana is one of the coldest capital cities on Earth, with winters that can drop toward −40°C and summers that swing well above +30°C. To soften the wind that tears across the open steppe, the city planted a green belt said to run to roughly a million trees. Nearly every landmark here had to be engineered for an enormous temperature range, and you will see that logic again and again — in Foster’s pyramid especially.
One naming note, because it trips people up: from 2019 until September 2022 the city was officially called Nur-Sultan, after former president Nursultan Nazarbayev. You may still see that name on older maps and signs. It has been Astana again since 2022, and Astana is what locals use.
Planning your self-guided route
Almost everything worth seeing lines up along Nurzhol Boulevard, a landscaped pedestrian spine that runs roughly two kilometers from Khan Shatyr in the west to the Ak Orda palace and the river in the east. Walking it straight through takes maybe 25 to 35 minutes; with photo stops, a tower climb and a mosque or two, budget a comfortable half to full day.
My honest advice on timing: if you only have a morning, walk Khan Shatyr to Bayterek and stop there. If you have a full day, cross the river to the pyramid, Independence Square and the mosques, then taxi out to the Nur-Alem sphere. For a room-by-room plan of how to sequence it with meals and museums, our Astana itinerary lays out a version I have used myself.
On season: late May through September is the easy window, long days and green boulevard. Winter is brutal but photogenic, and the buildings were literally designed for it — if you are tempted, read up on Kazakhstan in winter first and dress like you mean it. Getting around is simple: the boulevard is walkable, taxis (via the Yandex app) are cheap and plentiful, and buses cover the gaps. One line on mosque etiquette, because you will visit at least one: dress modestly with shoulders and knees covered, women should carry a headscarf, and everyone removes their shoes at the door.
Khan Shatyr: Foster’s giant tent
Start at the west end, at the building that reads as pure sculpture: Khan Shatyr, which opened in 2010. The name means “Tent of the Khan,” and it is a knowing echo of the nomadic yurt, blown up to civic scale. Norman Foster and Foster + Partners hung it from a single 150 m mast with a web of steel cables, then stretched a translucent skin of three-layer ETFE cushions over an elliptical base roughly 200 by 195 meters.
At about 150 meters it is the tallest point on the whole skyline, and Guinness has recognized it as the world’s tallest tensile structure. What that means on the ground is that the roof glows. The ETFE lets daylight flood in but holds heat, so the interior stays temperate while it is −30°C outside — the tent is, in effect, a climate on a stick.
Inside is a shopping mall, yes, but also an indoor park, a small monorail that loops the upper level, and — this is the detail everyone remembers — a top-floor beach club with sand said to have been shipped from the Maldives, kept warm year-round. It is gloriously strange. Whether you shop or not, walk in, look straight up at the cable net, and appreciate that you are standing under the most ambitious tent ever built.
Walking the boulevard: arches, “beer cans” and the Emerald Towers
Step out of Khan Shatyr and the axis opens in front of you. Immediately to the east, the twin curved towers of the KazMunayGas headquarters form a giant arch — a deliberate gateway that frames the view straight down the boulevard toward Bayterek. Stand under it and line up your shot; it is one of the best compositions in the city.
From there the walk is a parade of nicknames. The twin gold conical towers of the House of Ministries are known to absolutely everyone as the “beer cans,” and once you have heard it you cannot unsee it. Off to one side, the copper-clad Transport Tower gets called “the lighter.” And rising over the boulevard are the Emerald Towers, a cluster of green-glass high-rises from 2012 that lean at a slight, intentional tilt and rank among the tallest buildings in the country.
This stretch is where you feel the masterplan working. The buildings are not individually subtle, but they are arranged with real discipline: everything addresses the central axis, heights step up toward the middle, and the eye is pulled forward. It is theatrical, and it knows it.
Bayterek Tower: the tree of life
Dead center on the axis stands Bayterek, the tower that has become the symbol of the city. It opened in 2002, and its golden observation sphere sits at 97 meters — the number is not random, it marks 1997, the year the capital moved. From the boulevard it looks like a slim white tree holding up a golden egg, and that is precisely the story it is telling.
The name comes from a Kazakh legend about the tree of life, Baiterek, where the sacred bird Samruk lays a golden egg each year — the sun — only for the dragon Aydakhar to devour it, in an endless turning of the seasons. You ride a lift up into the sphere for a 360-degree view straight down the axis, Khan Shatyr one way and Ak Orda the other. For clarity: this is not a Foster building. The concept is credited to President Nazarbayev, with architect Akmurza Rustembekov, and it predates the big Foster commissions.
It is touristy, the queue can be slow, and I still think it is worth it, if only for orienting yourself over the whole layout. There is more history and practical detail than I can fit here in our dedicated Baiterek Tower guide.
Ak Orda and the government quarter
Keep walking east and the boulevard closes on the river with the Ak Orda Presidential Palace, opened in 2004. This is the president’s actual workplace, not a museum, so you admire it from the gates rather than the lobby. The white-marble facade and the blue-and-gold dome — about 80 meters up, topped by a spire with a sun and a steppe eagle — are unmistakably meant to read as authority, and they do.
Around Ak Orda sits the rest of the government quarter, a tidy composition of ministries and the two “beer can” towers I mentioned, all facing the axis. It is worth pausing here to notice how the plan uses the river: Ak Orda anchors one bank, the ceremonial buildings gather on the other, and the whole thing is stitched together by bridges. This is one of Kazakhstan’s most recognizable views, and it earns its place among the country’s built landmarks.
The Palace of Peace and Reconciliation: Foster’s pyramid
Cross toward the northern bank and you reach my favorite building in the city: the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, a glass-and-steel pyramid that Foster inaugurated in 2006. It is a clean 62 meters tall on a 62-by-62-meter base — a perfect pyramid, sitting alone on the axis like a piece of land art.
The engineering is the quiet marvel. Astana’s temperature can swing about 80°C across the year, so Foster’s team, with engineers Buro Happold, set the whole superstructure on bridge bearings that let it expand and contract without tearing itself apart. It is a building designed to breathe with the seasons.
Inside, an atrium rises the full height to an apex of stained glass — a flock of doves by the artist Brian Clarke, glowing pale blue when the sun is behind it. Below sits a roughly 1,300-seat opera house, and higher up a circular meeting hall modeled on the United Nations Security Council chamber, built to host a triennial congress of world religions. It is earnest in a way that could feel heavy-handed, and somehow, standing under those doves, it just works.
Independence Square: the National Museum and Hazrat Sultan Mosque
A short walk from the pyramid opens onto Independence Square, a broad ceremonial plaza that gathers several of the city’s cultural heavyweights. The National Museum of Kazakhstan sits along one edge, a large angular block of glass and marble that is well worth an hour or two for the Golden Man and the Bronze Age halls if you have the time.
Dominating the square is the Hazrat Sultan Mosque, opened in 2012. It holds around 10,000 worshippers, its central dome rises to 51 meters, and four minarets reach 77 meters — all in white marble carved with Kazakh ornament. Until 2022 it was the largest mosque in Central Asia, and it still feels enormous when you step inside onto the carpet. It is calm, luminous and generally welcoming to respectful visitors outside prayer times.
Astana Grand Mosque: Central Asia’s largest
The mosque that took Hazrat Sultan’s crown opened in 2022, a little further out on the left bank: the Astana Grand Mosque, designed by the firm Dewan. It is now the largest mosque in Central Asia by a wide margin, with capacity near 235,000 including the grounds and roughly 35,000 under the roof itself.
The numbers are hard to picture until you are there. Four minarets climb to 130 meters; the main dome tops out around 83 meters over a vast prayer hall floored with a single giant handmade carpet. One interior wall is a mosaic of the 99 names of Allah, and the scale of the space quiets people down the moment they walk in. It is a considerable taxi ride from the boulevard, so I would treat it as its own trip rather than a quick detour — but architecturally it is one of the most impressive things in the country.
Nur-Alem and EXPO 2017: the sphere
The last of the great set-pieces sits south of the center, on the site of Expo 2017, whose theme was “Future Energy.” Its centerpiece, Nur-Alem, is a giant glass sphere by the Chicago firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture — roughly 80 meters in diameter and about 100 meters tall across eight floors, and often described as the world’s largest spherical building.
It is now the Museum of Future Energy, and the building practices what it preaches, with solar cells on the skin and a wind-turbine scoop harvesting the steppe breeze. Inside you climb from floor to floor through themed energy exhibits, some more convincing than others, ending with a view out over the old Expo grounds. Kids love it. As a piece of engineering it is genuinely futuristic, and it photographs like a spaceship that has settled onto the grass.
More futuristic landmarks worth your time
If you have architecture stamina left, a few more buildings reward a detour. The Kazakhstan Central Concert Hall (Manfredi Nicoletti, 2009) is a swooping composition of tilted petals in blue glass, one of the most graceful shapes in the city. The Metropolitan Circus (2005) is a low concrete disc that everyone calls the “spaceship,” and it looks every bit the part. And rising over the eastern skyline is Abu Dhabi Plaza, currently the tallest tower in Central Asia — a reminder that the city is still growing up as well as out.
Between them, these buildings show the range of what has landed on the steppe here: Japanese masterplanning, British high-tech, American engineering, Gulf money, all within a couple of decades. For a sense of how it fits into the wider country, it is worth setting Astana alongside the other beautiful places in Kazakhstan — the canyons and steppe make the capital’s glass and steel feel even stranger by contrast.
Practical tips for photographers and short visits
A few things I wish I had known. For the classic skyline shot, stand on the axis near Bayterek looking east: the Emerald Towers stack up on the left and Ak Orda closes the view, and in the golden hour before sunset the marble goes warm. The KazMunayGas arch frames Bayterek beautifully from the west. And the pyramid is best in the last light, when the low sun sets the glass alight.
On time: a half-day covers Khan Shatyr, the boulevard and a Bayterek climb at a relaxed pace. A full day lets you add the pyramid, Independence Square, Hazrat Sultan and the Nur-Alem sphere, with a taxi hop or two to save your feet. The Grand Mosque, being further out, deserves a separate half-day. Opening hours and ticket prices shift with the season, so treat anything you read as approximate and check on the day — the towers and museums generally run roughly 10 a.m. to somewhere around 8 or 9 p.m. in summer, shorter in winter.
Frequently asked questions
Why is Astana so futuristic?
Because it was essentially built new after 1997, when Kazakhstan moved its capital to the site and commissioned a fresh masterplan from Kisho Kurokawa. With oil revenue behind it, an almost empty steppe in front of it, and a clear political brief to create a striking modern capital, planners could commission bold statement buildings from world-name architects rather than work around an existing old town.
Who designed the architecture of Astana?
The overall city plan came from the Japanese Metabolist architect Kisho Kurokawa, who won the 1998 competition. The individual icons came from different hands: Norman Foster designed Khan Shatyr and the pyramid, Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill designed the Nur-Alem sphere, the firm Dewan designed the Grand Mosque, and Manfredi Nicoletti designed the Central Concert Hall. Bayterek is credited to architect Akmurza Rustembekov.
How tall is the Khan Shatyr?
Khan Shatyr rises to about 150 meters at the top of its central mast, which makes it the tallest point on the Astana skyline and, according to Guinness World Records, the tallest tensile (tent-style) structure in the world. It opened in 2010 and was designed by Norman Foster’s Foster + Partners.
Who built the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation?
The pyramid was designed by Norman Foster and Foster + Partners, with structural engineering by Buro Happold, and was inaugurated in 2006. The stained-glass doves at its apex are the work of the British artist Brian Clarke. It was built to host a triennial congress of world and traditional religions.
What is the tallest building in Astana?
It depends on what you count. Khan Shatyr is the tallest structure on the skyline at roughly 150 meters, but it is a tent rather than an occupied high-rise. Among conventional towers, Abu Dhabi Plaza is the tallest — currently the tallest building in all of Central Asia — while the Emerald Towers are also among the country’s tallest.
Why was Astana renamed Nur-Sultan and then back to Astana?
In March 2019, when Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down after nearly three decades as president, parliament renamed the capital Nur-Sultan in his honor. After his political influence waned, the city reverted to its previous name, Astana, in September 2022. “Astana” simply means “capital” in Kazakh, which is why the earlier name returned so cleanly.
Is Astana worth visiting for its architecture?
If you have any interest in cities, urban design or big statement buildings, yes — I think it is genuinely worth the trip. Nowhere else lets you walk a two-kilometer axis past a Foster tent, a Foster pyramid, a golden observation egg and the world’s largest sphere in a single afternoon. It can feel staged and a little empty in places, and that is part of the experience rather than a flaw. Come curious rather than cynical and it rewards you.
Final thoughts
What stays with me about Astana is not any single building but the nerve of the whole thing: a country deciding, on open steppe, to build a capital that looks like the future and then actually doing it. You can quibble with individual pieces — some are more convincing up close than in photographs — but as a walk, from Foster’s glowing tent to his quiet pyramid, it is unlike anywhere else I have been.
Give it a full day if you can, dress for the season, and let the axis pull you along. Then use the extra time to see what the rest of the country holds, because the contrast between this glass skyline and the canyons and steppe beyond is the best argument for coming to Kazakhstan at all.
To keep planning, pair this walk with the best time to visit Kazakhstan and a wider Kazakhstan itinerary.
Photo credits
Khan Shatyr: Bgag (CC0). Palace of Peace and Reconciliation pyramid: jtstewart (CC BY-SA 2.0). Nur Alem sphere: Matti Blume (CC BY-SA 4.0). Emerald Towers and Ak Orda: Ken and Nyetta (CC BY 2.0). All via Wikimedia Commons.
