The wooden facade
Carved window frames and a tented tower.
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The Museum of Kazakh Folk Musical Instruments, named after the kobyz player and composer Ykylas Dukenuly (also spelled Ykhlas), occupies a carved wooden building on the eastern edge of central Almaty's Panfilov Park. Its nine halls draw on a collection of over 1,000 instruments, from more than 60 Kazakh types to those of other Turkic peoples and the wider world. The building, usually dated to 1908, was designed as the officers' club of Verny, Almaty's old name, by Andrei Zenkov, the engineer who built the nearby Ascension Cathedral; a 1979 restoration worked Kazakh motifs such as the tree of life into its carving. The museum opened in 1981, moved here in 1983 and in 1990 took the name of Ykylas (1843–1916), credited by the musicologist Akhmet Zhubanov with first taking the kobyz, the shamans' bowed instrument, out of their hands. Treasures include the poet Abai Kunanbayev's three-stringed dombra of unusual shape, given by his granddaughter, and the dombras of Birzhan Sal and Zhambyl. Among the oldest is the shaman Zharas's kobyz, which legend says was dug up when music was heard from his grave; a wind instrument was excavated at Otrar, the Silk Road city burned in 1220. Craftsmen rebuilt rare instruments such as the zhetigen zither from legends and old descriptions. It stands on Zenkov Street near the park's war memorial; in a straight line, the Ascension Cathedral is about 330 m west and the Green Bazaar about 560 m north. Allow about an hour: labels are in Kazakh, Russian and English but brief, so a guided tour helps.
Carved window frames and a tented tower.
Three strings and an unusual shape.
A shaman's instrument, among the oldest.
Zenkov Street, Panfilov Park, central Almaty
Ascension Cathedral, AlmatyA wooden Russian Orthodox cathedral in the heart of Panfilov Park, also known as4 minutes walk4.9
Green Bazaar, AlmatyOne of Almaty's oldest markets: stalls have stood here since 1868, when a tradin7 minutes walk4.4
Zhibek Zholy (Almaty Arbat)Zhibek Zholy, Kazakh for Silk Road, is a 4.2 km street through central Almaty, a15 minutes walkBuilt as the officers' club of Verny, it served in 1913 as a pavilion of Semirechye's first agricultural and industrial exhibition, then as a post and telegraph office in 1918–1926 and the Red Star cinema in 1927–1929. Evacuated Soviet theatre companies performed here in the Second World War; it later became the House of Officers of the Central Asian Military District and, in 1980–1982, a puppet theatre.
Recordings play in the halls, and the 120-seat lecture and concert hall hosts lecture-concerts and other events; staff sometimes play an instrument for visitors, though not on every visit.