Semey
An Irtysh river city with museums to the poet Abai and to Dostoevsky, who spent five years here in exile.
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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.
What you actually see
- 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.
Honest expectations
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.
What to pack for Semey
Chosen from what this place is for. Tap a kit for the full checklist.
Opening times, ticket prices and seasonal closures change - check the official source before you go: official site.