Palace of the Republic, Concert hall on Abai Square, Almaty, Kazakhstan
The Palace of the Republic is a concert hall at the crossroads of Dostyq and Abai Avenues in Almaty. Its flat-roofed rectangular volume is clad in blue-tinted glass panels behind four white piers, above a stepped base of reddish-brown stone. Inside, a single amphitheatre without balconies seats 2,567 people under a curved ceiling of round recessed lights; the stage is 48 m wide and 18 m deep.
Designed by the Kazgorstroyproekt institute from 1967 at the order of Dinmukhamed Kunaev, the building opened in 1970 as the Lenin Palace of Culture for the centenary of Lenin's birth; its creators received the USSR State Prize in 1971. In 1978 it hosted the international conference that adopted the Alma-Ata Declaration on primary health care. Renamed the Palace of the Republic on 6 December 1991, it was rebuilt in 2010-2011 for 10.4 billion tenge, a change local architects criticised.
The hall stands at the crossroads of Dostyq and Abai Avenues, next to the Abai monument and the lower station of the Kok-Tobe cable car. The 2010–2011 reconstruction adapted the building for visitors with disabilities and added parking spaces. The stage is 48 m wide and 18 m deep, with an orchestra pit on three hoists.
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