Founding of Astana

Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, stands on the Ishim River in the open steppe of the north of the country. It was founded in the nineteenth century as a Russian military outpost, called Akmolinsk, and grew into a modest town on the trade routes across the steppe. In the Soviet period it was expanded during the Virgin Lands campaign and renamed Tselinograd. After independence it was chosen to replace Almaty as the capital, which it became in the late 1990s, and was renamed Astana, a word meaning capital. Its futuristic architecture, including buildings by Norman Foster and Kisho Kurokawa, reflects its role as a showcase for the new state. For a time it was renamed Nur-Sultan, but the name Astana was restored in 2022.

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