Things to Do at EXPO 2017 Sphere (Nur Alem)

The EXPO 2017 Sphere - Nur Alem - rises above Astana like a silver soap bubble caught mid-burst, 80 m across and clad in flickering glass that throws blinding shards of light across the surrounding steppe. Inside, the air smells faintly of machine oil and chilled ozone from the elevators that whisk you up in near-silent capsules; your ears pop as the horizon tilts and the city shrinks to toy-size below. The building was never meant to survive the fair, yet here it stands, a permanent museum whose floors spiral around a hollow core so wide that flocks of swallows sometimes wheel inside, their wings echoing like paper fans. Locals treat it as their own sci-fi lighthouse: at dusk the lattice lights up in ice-blue Kazakh motifs, while teenagers drift across the plaza vaping apple-flavoured smoke and arguing about which floor has the best breeze.

From Astana station take tram 1 or 2 to Nurly Zhol, 150 tenge, then walk ten minutes across the humming pedestrian bridge where the wind tastes of river dust. Taxis from the centre (Saryarka district) run about 1,200 tenge and drop you at the south plaza; drivers usually know it simply as ‘Sfera’. If you’re self-driving, the underground garage charges 300 tenge per hour and smells sharply of fresh tar.