File:20141012 Kazakhstan 1381 Almaty (16070530498).jpg

The south side of Almaty is constrained by the snow-capped Zailiysky Ala-Too Range. (Almaty bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics, proposing “the most compact winter games in the last thirty years,” but lost out to Beijing which has no natural snow.)

On the right is the Maslikhat (City Council) building with stylized yurts in front. It is part of Republic Square (Respublika Alany) which straddles the highway in the foreground.

On the left behind the high-rise is the Almaty Television Tower. Situated on Kok-Tobe (Green Hill), the tower is 371.5 meters (1,219 feet) high.

Almaty is where an old Silk Road oasis called Almatu once stood. Almatu was destroyed in the 13th century by the Mongols led by Genghis Khan. Present-day Almaty got its start in 1854 as a Russian frontier fort. The town was nearly flattened by earthquakes in 1887 and 1911. In 1927 it became the capital of Kazakhstan with the name Alma-Ata which means Father of Apples, appropriate as the region is thought to be the ancestral home of the apple. The arrival of the Turkestan-Siberia railway in 1930 spurred the city’s growth. Although the capital was moved in 1998 to Astana [renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019] in the north nearer Russia, Almaty remains the country’s largest city and its business, social, and cultural center.

[The term ‘Silk Road’ was coined in 1877 by German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen. The Silk Road contributed not only to the exchange of goods and technologies, but also to the mutual enrichment of cultures and traditions of different peoples. Direct maritime trade between Europe and the Far East ultimately supplanted the overland route.]

On Google Earth: Maslikhat (City Council) Building 43°14'12.02"N, 76°56'44.32"E