Welcome to Almaty!
Almaty is the largest city and the financial and cultural centre of Kazakhstan. Standing astride the Silk Road, Almaty is the gateway to the region. Just south of the city, snow-capped mountains mark the border with Kyrgyzstan.
Almaty (Cyrillic: Алматы), or Alma-Ata (Russian: Алма-Ата), and formerly Verniy (Russian: Ве́рный) (1854–1921), is the largest city in Kazakhstan, with a population of about 2 million. It was the capital of Kazakhstan from 1929 to 1997, when the government relocated the capital to Akmola (renamed Astana in 1998, and Nur-Sultan in 2019).
Almaty is still the major commercial and cultural centre of Kazakhstan, as well as its most populous and most cosmopolitan city. The city is located in the mountainous area of southern Kazakhstan near the border with Kyrgyzstan in the foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau at an elevation of 700–900 m (2,300–3,000 feet), where the Large and Small Almatinka rivers run into the plain.The city has been part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the area of music since November 2017. The city was the host for a 1978 international conference on Primary Health Care where the Alma Ata Declaration was adopted, marking a paradigm shift in global public health.