Semey

Semey, formerly Semipalatinsk, grew from a fortress of 1718 into a trading town on the Irtysh, and its cultural weight is out of proportion to its size. Abai Kunanbayuly, the poet and philosopher regarded as the founder of modern Kazakh literature, worked in this region and the Abai museum here is the main institution devoted to him. Fyodor Dostoevsky served part of his sentence in Semipalatinsk between 1854 and 1859, and the house he lived in is a museum with a joint monument outside showing him with his Kazakh friend Chokan Valikhanov. The nineteenth-century centre, the Irtysh suspension bridge and the regional museum complete a day. The Semey Ormany pine forest lies nearby.

History

In 1718 Russia built a fort on the Irtysh near the ruins of a Buddhist monastery of seven buildings, which gave the place its name, Semipalatinsk, "seven-chambered city". Floods from the spring melt led to the fort being moved 18 kilometres upstream in 1778, and the town grew on the river trade between the nomads of Central Asia and the Russian Empire (Wikipedia, Semey).

The main sights

• The Abai museum - the collections on the poet and Kazakh literature.
• The Dostoevsky house - the museum in his place of residence and exile.
• The suspension bridge - the modern span over the Irtysh.
• The old centre - the nineteenth-century merchant buildings.

When to go

May to September; winters here are long and very cold. Museums keep shorter hours in winter and close on some weekdays. Abai's anniversary in August brings events.

Before you go

Museum labelling is in Kazakh and Russian with limited English. The city is workaday outside the museum quarter. Distances from Astana and Almaty are considerable. Some historic buildings are in poor repair.

Nearby

Zhidebai and Abai's mausoleum lie southwest; Oskemen is southeast.

Key facts