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Leaving the Museum, you might be fortunate to see guards changing a shift at the President’s Palace gates across the road. The President’s Palace was originally designed as a museum of Vladimir Lenin, the most profound Soviet leader, who, actually, had never visited Almaty. Many locals confess there is something thrilling in this building.
Going down Furmanov Street from the Museum you will finally come to the Republic Square, commonly known as the New Square (Novaya Ploshad). Founded in 1980 as Almaty’s biggest square, it is a regular place to hold parades and festivals. Locals favor it because it resembles vast Kazakh steppe enclosed with buildings like mountains. Even in hot stuffy summer evenings it is cooled by fresh breeze from the mountains and there is no better place in the whole city to have a date.
The Independence Monument in the middle of the square symbolically features crucial periods of the Kazakhstani history. Its central part, the Golden Man, is a 6 meter copy of a real gold finding from a burial mound near Almaty. In 1986, the New Square witnessed an allegedly staged rebellion against Moscow’s rule. A metal commemoration plate and the fountains stripped of marble tiles in some places remind people of that event today.
A little higher the Monument, up the cascades of steps on Baiseitov Street, there is the Tribune art gallery of modern Kazakhstani artists.
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