Kazakhstan Landmarks: 20+ Famous Places & Monuments

Last updated: July 2026 · Written by the Kazakhstan Tourism Guide editorial team

The best of Kazakhstan landmarks are scattered across a country so large it almost doesn’t compute: this is the ninth-largest nation on Earth, bigger than all of Western Europe put together, and its famous sights are spread over distances that will genuinely reshape your sense of what a “day trip” means. I’ve spent a lot of time crossing this steppe, and what keeps pulling me back is the sheer range of it. In one week you can stand under a mirrored pyramid designed by a British starchitect, walk through a 14th-century mausoleum commissioned by Tamerlane himself, and drive out to a red-rock gorge that locals nickname the Grand Canyon of Kazakhstan.

What makes the country such an odd, rewarding place to travel is that these things sit side by side without any obvious logic. Astana is a purpose-built capital of glass and gold that looks like an architect’s rendering somebody accidentally built at full scale. Almaty, a few hundred kilometres south, is a leafy, Soviet-planned city with snow peaks at the end of the boulevards. Out west near Aktau you get chalk-white desert formations that could pass for another planet, and out in the Kyzylorda region sits Baikonur, the cosmodrome from which the first human being ever left the Earth. Silk Road caravans, Soviet rocket engineers, nomadic petroglyph carvers and 21st-century developers have all left their mark, and the result is one of the most genuinely surprising collections of landmarks you’ll find anywhere. Below I’ve pulled together the ones actually worth your time, grouped so you can plan a real trip around them.

Kazakhstan’s landmarks at a glance

Before we go deep, here’s the quick-reference version. If you only remember a handful of famous places in Kazakhstan, make it these. I’ve noted the city or region and whether each is man-made or natural, because that geography really does dictate how you’ll structure your route.

Landmark	City / Region	Type	Why it’s famous
Bayterek Tower	Astana	Man-made	97 m monument and symbol of the capital, based on a folk tale
Khan Shatyr	Astana	Man-made	150 m translucent “tent” by Norman Foster with an indoor beach
Palace of Peace & Reconciliation	Astana	Man-made	62 m glass pyramid, also by Foster, with an opera hall inside
Hazrat Sultan Mosque	Astana	Man-made	Vast white-and-blue mosque, one of Central Asia’s largest
Ascension (Zenkov) Cathedral	Almaty	Man-made	All-timber Orthodox cathedral that survived the 1911 earthquake
Kok-Tobe & TV tower	Almaty	Man-made	City-overlook hill reached by cable car; 372 m broadcast tower
Medeu	Almaty	Man-made	World’s highest large outdoor skating rink at ~1,691 m
Khoja Ahmed Yasawi Mausoleum	Turkestan	Man-made	Timur-era shrine; Kazakhstan’s first UNESCO site (2003)
Aisha Bibi	Near Taraz	Man-made	Terracotta-clad medieval mausoleum wrapped in a love legend
Tamgaly petroglyphs	Near Almaty	Man-made	~5,000 Bronze-Age carvings; UNESCO listed in 2004
Charyn Canyon	Almaty region	Natural	Red sandstone “Valley of Castles” up to ~300 m deep
Kolsai & Kaindy lakes	Almaty region	Natural	Alpine lakes, including Kaindy’s submerged sunken forest
Altyn-Emel Singing Dune	Almaty region	Natural	~150 m dune that hums in the wind; striped Aktau hills nearby
Bozzhyra	Mangystau	Natural	White limestone “fangs” on the remote Ustyurt Plateau
Baikonur Cosmodrome	Kyzylorda region	Man-made	World’s first spaceport; launched Sputnik and Gagarin

You’ll notice the list clusters heavily around two cities. Almaty and Astana are your logical bases, and most first-timers split their trip between the two. For a fuller menu of options beyond this shortlist, my rundown of things to do in Kazakhstan goes wider, but the landmarks below are the ones I’d build a first visit around.

Astana’s modern icons

Astana is the opposite of an ancient capital: it was a modest provincial town called Akmola until the government moved the seat of power here from Almaty in 1997, then poured a generation’s worth of oil money into building a skyline from scratch on the flat northern steppe. The result is all glass, gold and improbable geometry — a city that can feel a little sterile up close, especially in the wind, but that lights up at dusk into something genuinely striking. One naming note worth clearing up early: the capital was renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019 in honour of the country’s first president, then quietly reverted to Astana in 2022. You’ll still see the old name on some maps and signs. Everyone calls it Astana now. If you want the full itinerary I’ve written up separately, my guide to things to do in Astana covers where to eat and stay between the sights.

Bayterek Tower

If Kazakhstan has a single logo, this is it. The Bayterek Tower is a 97-metre monument topped with a golden glass sphere, and the height is a deliberate nod to 1997, the year the capital moved here. It was completed in 2002 and — this is the fact everyone gets wrong — it was designed by the Kazakh architect Akmurza Rustembekov, not by Norman Foster, who gets the credit far too often simply because he designed two of the city’s other big projects. The tower illustrates an old nomadic folk tale in which the mythical Samruk bird lays a golden egg containing the secrets of happiness in the branches of the tree of life. You ride a lift up to the observation deck inside that golden egg, where there’s a bronze imprint of the first president’s hand that visitors queue to touch. Honestly the view is better than the object itself, but as a piece of national symbolism it does its job.

Khan Shatyr

This one really is Norman Foster’s, and it’s the single most impressive building in the city to my eye. Khan Shatyr opened in 2010 as a 150-metre translucent tent — when it went up it was billed as the world’s tallest tensile structure — draped over a giant shopping and entertainment complex. The name means “royal marquee”, a nod to the nomadic tents that once dotted this steppe, and the translucent skin is clever engineering for a place where winters routinely hit minus thirty: it traps warmth and keeps a summer-like climate inside all year. The genuinely surreal part is the top floor, where there’s an indoor beach with sand shipped in from the Maldives and a wave pool, so you can technically sunbathe while it’s blizzarding outside. It’s kitsch and I love it. Even if you don’t shop, walk in just to stand under the canopy and look up.

Palace of Peace and Reconciliation

Foster’s other Astana landmark is the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, a 62-metre glass-and-steel pyramid built between 2004 and 2006 to house a triennial congress of world religious leaders. The proportions are neat and deliberate: it sits on a square base measuring 62 by 62 metres, so it’s as wide as it is tall. Inside there’s a 1,500-seat opera hall down in the base and, at the very apex, a meeting chamber ringed with stained glass showing doves, lit up gold when the sun hits it. It’s a strange building to visit because it’s half concert hall, half diplomatic set piece, and outside congress season it can feel a little empty. But the apex chamber is worth the climb, and the whole thing photographs beautifully against the flat horizon. Budget an hour, no more.

Hazrat Sultan Mosque

Across the ceremonial axis from the pyramid sits the Hazrat Sultan Mosque, a sprawling white building trimmed in blue that opened in 2012. When it was finished it was the largest mosque in Central Asia, holding around ten thousand worshippers, and it kept that title for a decade until the even bigger Astana Grand Mosque overtook it in 2022. So be careful how you phrase it: Hazrat Sultan was the regional record-holder, and it’s still one of the most beautiful mosques in the country, with classical Islamic geometry, sculpted white marble and enormous chandeliers under the main dome. It’s open to respectful visitors outside prayer times; dress modestly and women should bring a headscarf. Even if mosques aren’t usually your thing, the sheer scale and the crispness of the stonework make it a worthwhile stop.

Nur-Astana Mosque and the Nur-Alem sphere

Two smaller Astana landmarks round out the modern skyline. The Nur-Astana Mosque, with its golden dome and slim minarets, predates Hazrat Sultan and is worth a quick look if you’re passing. More eye-catching is Nur-Alem, the enormous mirrored glass sphere built for the Expo 2017 world’s fair — at eighty metres across it’s said to be the largest spherical building on the planet, and it now houses a museum of future energy. Neither needs more than a passing visit, but together they complete the picture of a capital that never met a bold architectural gesture it didn’t like.

Almaty’s landmarks

Almaty is the country’s old capital and, for my money, the more livable city by a wide margin: tree-lined avenues laid out on a grid, cafés and galleries, apple orchards in the foothills — the city’s name is tied to the apple — and the white wall of the Trans-Ili Alatau mountains closing off the southern horizon. It’s green where Astana is glass, and the landmarks here lean older and more human in scale. It’s also the natural launchpad for almost every great day trip in the country. My full guide to things to do in Almaty has the neighbourhood-level detail, but here are the sights themselves.

Ascension (Zenkov) Cathedral

This is the landmark I send everyone to first in Almaty. The Ascension Cathedral — usually called the Zenkov Cathedral after its engineer — is a candy-coloured Russian Orthodox church completed in 1907, rising about 56 metres and built almost entirely of Tien Shan spruce. Its claim to fame is structural: it survived the devastating Kebin earthquake of 1911 that flattened much of the city, thanks to a deliberately flexible timber frame that swayed rather than snapped. You’ll often hear it described as being built “without a single nail”, which is a nice story but a simplification — some metal was used in the construction. Either way it’s a genuinely remarkable piece of engineering as well as a lovely thing to look at, all pastel turrets and gilded domes, and it sits right in the middle of Panfilov Park so you can combine the two easily.

Kok-Tobe and the TV tower

For the classic Almaty overview, head up Kok-Tobe, the green hill on the southeastern edge of the city. A short cable car ride lifts you out of the streets to a small hilltop park with cafés, a little zoo, souvenir stalls and — the reason everyone’s phones come out — a panorama across the whole city to the mountains beyond. Come toward sunset when the light goes gold and the lights start to flicker on below. Rising above the hill is the Kok-Tobe TV tower, a 372-metre broadcast mast that’s one of the tallest structures in Central Asia. Do note that the tower itself is closed to the public — you admire it, you don’t go up it — but the hilltop viewpoint beside it more than delivers the view you came for.

Medeu

Twenty minutes up a gorge above the city sits Medeu, an outdoor speed-skating and bandy complex that holds a genuine world record: at roughly 1,691 metres above sea level it’s the highest large outdoor artificial-ice rink on the planet. The thin mountain air and pure meltwater used to freeze it made it famous in Soviet times as a place where skaters shattered world records — the rink in its current artificial-ice form dates to 1972. Even in summer when there’s no ice, it’s a spectacular amphitheatre of a spot ringed by mountains, and it’s the gateway to more. From Medeu a cable car carries on up to Shymbulak, the country’s main ski resort, so a lot of people combine the two into a single half-day. It’s one of the easiest and most rewarding escapes from the city.

Panfilov Park and the Central State Museum

Back down in the centre, Panfilov Park is the leafy heart of old Almaty and worth a slow wander. Beyond the Zenkov Cathedral you’ll find the striking Soviet war memorial dedicated to the 28 Panfilov Guardsmen — a hulking bronze frieze of soldiers with an eternal flame that’s a genuinely moving piece of monumental sculpture. A little further out, the Central State Museum of Kazakhstan is the best single place to get your head around the country’s history, from Bronze-Age nomads and Silk Road cities through to Soviet space engineering, with the famous replica of the “Golden Man” warrior on display. If it’s raining, or you want context before heading out to the ruins and petroglyphs, spend a couple of hours here first.

Silk Road and historic monuments

For all its modern showpieces, some of the most important Kazakhstan monuments are medieval, dating from the centuries when Silk Road caravans crossed the south of the country and cities like Turkestan and Taraz were centres of trade and learning. These are the landmarks that give the country genuine historical depth, and a couple of them are among the finest surviving buildings in Central Asia. If Silk Road history is your main draw, my dedicated guide to the Silk Road in Kazakhstan traces the whole route, but these three monuments are the essential stops.

Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi

This is the most historically significant building in the country, and if you see only one monument in Kazakhstan, make it this one. The Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, in the southern city of Turkestan, was commissioned by Timur — Tamerlane — in the 1390s to honour a revered 12th-century Sufi poet and teacher, and it was intended as a grand statement of the conqueror’s power. Timur died in 1405 with the building unfinished, and it was simply left that way: the plain, undecorated front façade you see today, still studded with the wooden scaffolding pegs, is where the work stopped. What did get finished is extraordinary. At about 38.7 metres it’s crowned by the largest brick dome in Central Asia, glazed in that unmistakable turquoise, and inside sits a two-tonne bronze cauldron cast for ritual use. It became Kazakhstan’s very first UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, and standing in front of that half-finished portal is one of those travel moments that genuinely gives you pause.

Aisha Bibi

Smaller but arguably even more beautiful is Aisha Bibi, a compact 11th- or 12th-century mausoleum standing in a village just west of Taraz. What makes it unique is the surface: it’s the only monument in all of Central Asia faced entirely in carved terracotta, its walls covered in an intricate lace of geometric and floral tilework, much of it painstakingly restored. Then there’s the legend, because every good Central Asian monument comes with one. The story goes that Aisha Bibi, a noblewoman, was travelling to marry her beloved when she was bitten by a snake hidden in her headdress and died, and the grieving ruler built this exquisite tomb over her. Whatever the truth, it’s a quietly romantic, deeply photogenic little building, and it pairs naturally with the neighbouring tomb of her nursemaid, Babaji Khatun.

Tamgaly petroglyphs

For something far older than any building, drive out to Tamgaly, an open-air gallery of rock art in a rocky gorge about 170 kilometres northwest of Almaty. Across the reddish canyon walls are roughly 5,000 carvings, the oldest dating from the Bronze Age and layered up through later nomadic cultures, and the most famous of them are strange “sun-headed” figures — human bodies topped with radiant solar discs — that nobody has fully explained. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004. One crucial thing to get straight: do not confuse Tamgaly with Tamgaly-Tas, which is a completely different site on the Ili River featuring much later Buddhist rock carvings. They sound almost identical and travellers mix them up constantly — the UNESCO petroglyph site is the ancient one in the gorge.

Kazakhstan’s natural landmarks

Here’s where the country really got under my skin. The man-made sights are impressive, but the natural landmarks are what I’d travel back for, and almost all of the great ones are within a day or an overnight of Almaty, which is another reason I keep steering first-timers toward basing themselves in Almaty. This is huge, empty, dramatic country — canyons, alpine lakes, singing dunes, chalk deserts — and much of it is protected. If you want the wider picture, my guides to the country’s national parks and to the most beautiful places in Kazakhstan go further, but these are the headline natural landmarks.

Charyn Canyon

Charyn Canyon is the natural landmark most people put at the top of their list, and it earns it. About 200 kilometres east of Almaty, the Charyn River has carved a gorge of layered red sandstone up to roughly 300 metres deep, and its most photographed stretch is the Valley of Castles, where erosion has sculpted the rock into towers, spires and battlements that really do look like a ruined citadel. It’s routinely called the Grand Canyon of Kazakhstan, and while it’s smaller than its Arizona namesake, walking down through the Valley of Castles to the green ribbon of river at the bottom is a proper adventure. You can do it as a long day trip from Almaty, but I’d strongly recommend staying overnight in one of the simple eco-camps nearby so you catch the canyon walls glowing at sunrise and sunset, when the red rock is at its best. It regularly tops lists of the most scenic spots in the country, and rightly so.

Kolsai and Kaindy lakes

Deeper into the Tian Shan, a few hours from Charyn, sit the Kolsai Lakes: a chain of three alpine lakes strung up a forested valley, their water an improbable green-blue, ringed by spruce and snow peaks. The lowest lake is an easy walk from the road; reaching the second involves a proper hike and the third is a serious trek best done with a guide. Close by is Kaindy Lake, the strangest and most photographed of the lot. It formed after a 1911 earthquake and landslide dammed a valley and drowned a spruce forest — and because the water is so cold, the trees never rotted. The bare, bone-white trunks still stand upright, poking out of the turquoise surface like the masts of a sunken fleet. Divers even go down among them. It’s one of the eeriest, most beautiful spots in the whole country.

Big Almaty Lake

Closest of all to the city — barely an hour from the centre — is Big Almaty Lake, a startlingly turquoise glacial reservoir cupped in the mountains at around 2,500 metres. On a clear, still day the colour is almost unreal, shifting from milky jade to deep blue depending on the light and the season, framed by grey peaks. Because it supplies drinking water to the city, swimming is off-limits and access rules can tighten without much warning, so it’s a look-don’t-touch landmark. But the drive up through the gorge is gorgeous and the lake makes a fantastic half-day escape when you don’t have time for the longer trips further east. Go early; the light and the crowds are both better before midday.

Altyn-Emel’s Singing Dune

Out in the arid country beyond Charyn lies Altyn-Emel National Park, home to one of Kazakhstan’s genuine natural oddities. The Singing Dune is an isolated sand mountain about 150 metres high and three kilometres long, and in dry, breezy conditions the sand generates a deep, resonant hum — a low droning “song” caused by the grains sliding against one another. Climb it and the sound seems to come from underneath your feet. The same park protects the Aktau mountains, an eroded range banded in stripes of red, cream and pale green like a layer cake, plus ancient rock carvings and herds of rare kulan wild donkeys. Altyn-Emel is remote and best done as an overnight or two with a guide and a proper vehicle, but it’s about as far from the city crowds as you can get.

Mangystau’s Bozzhyra

For the most otherworldly landscape in the country you have to go a very long way west, to the Mangystau region near the Caspian port of Aktau. Out on the vast, empty Ustyurt Plateau stands Bozzhyra, a cluster of white limestone pinnacles — the tourist brochures call them “fangs” or “tusks”, and they aren’t exaggerating — rising sheer from a chalk-white valley floor. The whole plateau was once a seabed, and the eroded formations, canyons and lone buttes make it feel less like Kazakhstan than like the surface of some distant planet. This is serious expedition territory: you’ll want a 4×4, a driver who knows the tracks, and a couple of days, since Mangystau is closer to Azerbaijan than to Almaty. But for landscape photographers and anyone chasing genuine remoteness, it’s the crown jewel of the country’s natural landmarks.

Soviet and space-age landmarks

Kazakhstan spent most of the 20th century inside the Soviet Union, and that era left landmarks unlike anything else on this list — from the launchpad of the Space Age to sombre memorials of the Gulag. This is a very different kind of sightseeing, but for a lot of travellers it’s the most compelling reason to come.

The headline is Baikonur Cosmodrome, in the Kyzylorda region of south-central Kazakhstan. Founded in 1955, it’s the world’s first and largest operational spaceport, and its résumé is genuinely staggering: this is the site from which Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, was launched in 1957, and from which Yuri Gagarin lifted off aboard Vostok 1 in 1961 to become the first human being in space. It’s still in active use, and here’s the quirk — the cosmodrome and the town around it are leased by Kazakhstan to Russia and effectively run as Russian territory. You cannot just turn up. Visiting requires special permits and an organised tour, typically arranged months in advance, and the most sought-after trips are timed to coincide with an actual crewed launch. If you can make the logistics work, watching a rocket climb off the steppe where Gagarin’s did is a bucket-list experience like few others.

There’s a darker layer of Soviet history preserved on the steppe too, and it deserves a sober mention. Kazakhstan was home to some of the largest camps in the Gulag system. Outside Astana, the ALZHIR memorial marks the site of a camp that specifically held the wives and children of men branded “enemies of the people” during Stalin’s purges, and further south the sprawling Karlag complex has its own museum near Karaganda. These are not sights you visit for beauty; they’re places of remembrance, quietly and thoughtfully done, and they add essential and painful context to any real understanding of the country. If your trip has room for it, ALZHIR is an easy and worthwhile half-day from the capital.

Planning a Kazakhstan landmarks trip

So how do you turn all of this into an actual itinerary? The honest answer is that you cannot see everything in one trip — the country is simply too big, and the western sites near Aktau are a whole separate expedition from the classic south. For a first visit, I’d base yourself in two cities and accept that Mangystau and Baikonur are trips for another time unless you have three weeks and real determination.

Start in Almaty. It’s the better base for landmarks by a distance, because the great day trips — Charyn Canyon, Big Almaty Lake, the Kolsai and Kaindy lakes, the Tamgaly petroglyphs, and with an overnight, Altyn-Emel — all radiate out from here. Give yourself at least four or five days: a couple in the city for the cathedral, Kok-Tobe and Medeu, and the rest out in the mountains and canyons. Then fly north to Astana (it’s a short domestic hop) for two days of futuristic architecture — Bayterek, Khan Shatyr, the pyramid and the mosques — plus a half-day out to the ALZHIR memorial. If Silk Road history is a priority, tack on Turkestan for the Yasawi mausoleum, which now has its own airport and makes a rewarding side trip.

On timing: the sweet spot is late spring through early autumn, roughly May to September. Summer in the south is hot but the mountains stay pleasant, the canyon and lake trips are all open, and the steppe is at its greenest in early summer. Winter is brutally cold, especially in Astana where temperatures plunge well below freezing, though it’s also when Medeu and Shymbulak come into their own for skating and skiing — worth weighing up when you decide when to go. For a proper month-by-month breakdown I’ve put together a guide on the best time to visit Kazakhstan. As for UNESCO bragging rights, the country currently has six World Heritage Sites — three cultural (including the Yasawi mausoleum and the Tamgaly petroglyphs) and three natural — so a well-planned southern trip can tick several of them off in a single loop.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most famous landmark in Kazakhstan?

The Bayterek Tower in Astana is the most recognisable landmark and the country’s unofficial symbol — that golden sphere on a white lattice appears on everything from banknotes to fridge magnets. For historical significance, though, the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi in Turkestan is the more important monument, being the nation’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site. Between them they capture the two sides of Kazakhstan: brash modern capital and deep Silk Road past.

What is Kazakhstan best known for?

Kazakhstan is best known for three things: being the world’s largest landlocked country and ninth-largest overall; the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from which the first satellite and the first human were launched into space; and its wide-open steppe and nomadic heritage. Add the futuristic architecture of Astana and the Silk Road monuments of the south, and you have a country far more varied than most travellers expect before they arrive.

Is Astana the same as Nur-Sultan?

Yes — they’re the same city. The Kazakh capital was called Astana until 2019, when it was renamed Nur-Sultan to honour the country’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. In 2022 the government reversed the change and the city officially became Astana again. You may still see “Nur-Sultan” on older maps, signs and tickets, but the current and correct name is Astana, and that’s what everyone uses today.

Why is the Bayterek Tower famous?

The Bayterek Tower is famous as the symbol of Kazakhstan’s purpose-built capital. Standing 97 metres tall — a height chosen to mark 1997, when the capital moved to Astana — it was completed in 2002 and designed by Kazakh architect Akmurza Rustembekov, not Norman Foster as is often wrongly claimed. Its golden-egg-in-a-tree form illustrates the folk legend of the Samruk bird, and its observation deck offers the best view over the city.

How many UNESCO World Heritage Sites does Kazakhstan have?

Kazakhstan currently has six UNESCO World Heritage Sites: three cultural and three natural. The cultural sites include the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi in Turkestan — the country’s first, inscribed in 2003 — and the Tamgaly petroglyphs near Almaty, listed in 2004. Several sites are also shared, transnational listings covering the Silk Roads corridors and the Western Tien Shan mountain range, reflecting Kazakhstan’s position at the heart of Central Asia.

Can tourists visit Baikonur Cosmodrome?

Yes, but not freely. Baikonur is leased to and administered by Russia, and the whole site is a restricted zone, so independent visits are impossible. You must join an organised tour and obtain special permits, which typically need to be arranged months in advance. The most popular tours are scheduled around actual crewed rocket launches. It’s expensive and bureaucratic, but for space enthusiasts, seeing a launch from Gagarin’s own spaceport is unforgettable.

What is the largest mosque in Kazakhstan?

The largest mosque in Kazakhstan is the Astana Grand Mosque, which opened in 2022 and can hold tens of thousands of worshippers, making it one of the biggest in the world. Before it was built, that distinction belonged to the Hazrat Sultan Mosque, also in Astana, which opened in 2012 and was the largest mosque in Central Asia for a decade. Both are open to respectful visitors outside prayer times.

Final thoughts

What I love about Kazakhstan is that it refuses to be one thing. You can spend the morning under a mirrored pyramid in a capital that didn’t exist in its current form thirty years ago, and by evening be watching the sun set red on a 300-metre canyon that’s been eroding for millions of years. Few countries pack in this much range — Space Age, Silk Road, Soviet, nomadic and hyper-modern all at once — and fewer still see so few foreign visitors relative to what’s on offer.

If you take one thing from this, let it be to slow down and pick a region rather than trying to sweep the whole country. Base yourself in Almaty, get out into the canyons and lakes, give the Yasawi mausoleum the day it deserves, and save the western deserts and Baikonur for a return trip — because you will want one. There is far more where these came from if you keep exploring what there is to do in Kazakhstan. These Kazakhstan landmarks aren’t just checkboxes; they’re the reason this odd, enormous, wide-open country has become one of my favourite places to travel anywhere. Go before everyone else figures it out.

Photo credits

All images via Wikimedia Commons. Bayterek Tower by Ken and Nyetta (CC BY 2.0); Khan Shatyr by Bgag (CC0); Palace of Peace and Reconciliation by jtstewart (CC BY-SA 2.0); Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi by Petar Milošević (CC BY-SA 4.0); Ascension (Zenkov) Cathedral by Rudolph.A.furtado (CC0); Charyn Canyon by Bgag (CC0); Aisha Bibi by Dmitriy Koshelev (CC BY-SA 4.0); Medeu by Kefi (CC0). Licensed under the respective Creative Commons terms.