Bishkek

Originally a caravan rest stop (possibly founded by the Sogdians) on one of the branches of the Silk Road through the Tian Shan range, the location was fortified in 1825 by the khan of Kokand with a mud fort. In the last years of Kokhand rule, the Pishpek fortress was led by Atabek, the Datka.

In 1860 Imperial Russia annexed the area, and the military forces of Colonel Apollon Ernestovich Zimmermann took and razed the fort. Colonel Zimmermann rebuilt the town over the destroyed fort and appointed field-Poruchik Titov as head of a new Russian garrison. The Imperial Russian government redeveloped the site from 1877 onward, encouraging the settlement of Russian peasants by giving them fertile land to develop.

Frunze statue near the railway station

In 1926, the city became the capital of the newly established Kirghiz ASSR and was renamed "Frunze" after Mikhail Frunze, Lenin's close associate who was born in Bishkek and played key roles during the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and during the Russian Civil War of the early 1920s.

The early 1990s were tumultuous. In June 1990, a state of emergency was declared following severe ethnic riots in southern Kyrgyzstan that threatened to spread to the capital. The city was renamed Bishkek on 5 February 1991 and Kyrgyzstan achieved independence later that year during the breakup of the Soviet Union. Before independence, the majority of Bishkek's population were ethnic Russians. In 2004, Russians made up approximately 20% of the city's population, and about 7–8% in 2011.[6]

Today, Bishkek is a modern city with many restaurants and cafes, and with many second-hand European and Japanese cars and minibuses crowding its streets. However, streets and sidewalks have fallen into disrepair since the 1990s. At the same time, Bishkek still preserves its former Soviet feel with Soviet-period buildings and gardens prevailing over newer structures.

Bishkek is also the country's financial centre, with all of the country's 21 commercial banks headquartered there. During the Soviet era, the city was home to a large number of industrial plants, but most have been shut down since 1991 or now operate on a much-reduced scale. One of Bishkek's largest employment centres today is the Dordoy Bazaar open market, where many of the Chinese goods imported to CIS countries are sold.

Though the city is relatively young, the surrounding area has some sites of interest dating to prehistorical times. There are also sites from the Greco-Buddhist period, the period of Nestorian influence, the era of the Central Asian khanates, and the Soviet period.

Russian Orthodox cathedral of the Holy Resurrection

The central part of the city is laid out on a rectangular grid plan. The city's main street is the east–west Chui Avenue (Chuy Prospekti), named after the region's main river. In the Soviet era, it was called Lenin Avenue. Along or near it are many of the most important government buildings and universities. These include the Academy of Sciences compound. The westernmost section of the avenue is known as Deng Xiaoping Avenue.

The main north–south street is Yusup Abdrakhmanov Street, still commonly referred to by its old name, Sovietskaya Street. Its northern and southern sections are called, respectively, Yelebesov and Baityk Batyr Streets. Several major shopping centers are located along it, and in the north it provides access to Dordoy Bazaar.

Erkindik ("Freedom") Boulevard runs from north to south, from the main railroad station (Bishkek II) south of Chui Avenue to the museum quarter and sculpture park just north of Chui Avenue, and further north toward the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the past it was called Dzerzhinsky Boulevard, named after a Communist revolutionary, Felix Dzerzhinsky, and its northern continuation is still called Dzerzhinsky Street.

An important east–west street is Jibek Jolu ('Silk Road'). It runs parallel to Chui Avenue about 2 km (1.2 mi) north of it, and is part of the main east–west road of Chui Province. Both the eastern and western bus terminals are located along Jibek Jolu.

There is a Roman Catholic church located at ul. Vasiljeva 197 (near Rynok Bayat). It is the only Catholic cathedral in Kyrgyzstan.[7]

There is a Stadium after Dolon Omurzakov located near centre of Bishkek. This is a largest stadium in Kyrgyz Republic.

• State Historical Museum, located in Ala-Too Square, the main city square
• State Museum of Applied Arts, containing examples of traditional Kyrgyz handicrafts
• Frunze House Museum
• Statue of Ivan Panfilov in the park near the White House.
• An equestrian statue of Mikhail Frunze stands in a large park (Boulevard Erkindik) across from the train station.
• The train station was built in 1946 by German prisoners of war and has survived since then without further renovation or repairs; most of those who built it perished and were buried in unmarked pits near the station.
• The main government building, the White House, is a huge, seven-storey marble block and the former headquarters of the Communist Party of the Kirghiz SSR
• At Ala-Too Square there is an independence monument where the changing of the guards may be watched.
• Osh Bazaar, west of the city centre, is a large, picturesque produce market
• Kyrgyz National Philharmonic, concert hall

The Dordoy Bazaar, just inside the bypass highway on the north-eastern edge of the city, is a major retail and wholesale market.

The Kyrgyz Ala-Too mountain range, some 40 kilometres (25 mi) away, provides a spectacular backdrop to the city; the Ala Archa National Park is only a 30 to 45 minutes' drive away.

Bishkek is about 300 km away directly from the country's second city Osh. However, its nearest large city is Almaty of Kazakhstan, which is 190 km to the east. Furthermore, it is 470 km from Tashkent (Uzbekistan), 680 km from Dushanbe (Tajikistan), and about 1,000 km each from Nur-Sultan (Kazakhstan), Ürümqi (China), Islamabad (Pakistan), and Kabul (Afghanistan).

Bishkek has a Mediterranean-influenced humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dsa.), as the average mean temperature in the winter is below 0 °C (32.0 °F).[8] Average precipitation is around 440 millimetres (17 in) per year. Average daily high temperatures range from 3 °C (37.4 °F) in January to about 31 °C (87.8 °F) during July.[9] The summer months are dominated by dry periods, punctuated by the occasional thunderstorm, which produces strong gusty winds and rare dust storms. The mountains to the south provide a natural boundary and protection from much of the damaging weather, as does the smaller mountain chain which runs north-west to south-east. In the winter months, sparse snow storms and frequent heavy fog are the dominating features. There are sometimes temperature inversions, during which the fog can last for days at a time.

Emissions of air pollutants in Bishkek amounted to 14,400 tons in 2010.[22] Among all cities in Kyrgyzstan, the level of air pollution in Bishkek is the highest, occasionally exceeding maximum allowable concentrations by several times, especially in the city centre.[23] For example, concentrations of formaldehyde occasionally exceed maximum allowable limits by a factor of four.

Responsibility for ambient air quality monitoring in Bishkek lies with the Kyrgyz State Agency of Hydrometeorology. There are seven air-quality monitoring stations in Bishkek, measuring levels of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, formaldehyde and ammonia.[22]

As with many cities in post-Soviet states, housing in Bishkek has undergone extensive changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union. While housing was formerly distributed to citizens in the Soviet era, housing in Bishkek has since become privatised.

Though single family houses are slowly becoming more popular, the majority of the residents live in Soviet-era apartments. Despite the Kyrgyz economy experiencing growth, increases in available housing has been slow with very little new construction. As a result of this growing prosperity and the lack of new formal housing, prices have been rising significantly—doubling from 2001 to 2002.[24]

Those unable to afford the high price of housing within Bishkek, notably internal migrants from rural villages and small provincial towns often have to resort to informal squatter settlements on the outskirts of the city. These settlements are estimated to house 400,000 people or about 30 percent of Bishkek's population. While many of the settlements have lacked basic necessities such as electricity and running water, recently there has been a push by the local government to provide these services.[25]

Bishkek city covers 169.6 square kilometres (65.5 square miles)[3] and is administered separately and not part of any region. Besides the city proper, one urban-type settlement and one village are administered by the city: Chong-Aryk and Orto-Say.[3] The city is divided into 4 districts: Birinchi May, Lenin, Oktyabr and Sverdlov. Chong-Aryk and Orto-Say are part of Lenin District.

Public transportation includes buses, electric trolleybuses, and public vans (known in Russian as marshrutka). The first bus and trolley bus services in Bishkek were introduced in 1934 and 1951, respectively.[49]

Taxi cabs can be found throughout the city.

The city is considering designing and building a light rail system (Russian: скоростной трамвай).

There are two main bus stations in Bishkek. The smaller old Eastern Bus Station is primarily the terminal for minibuses to various destinations within or just beyond the eastern suburbs, such as Kant, Tokmok, Kemin, Issyk Ata, or the Korday border crossing.

Long-distance regular bus and minibus services to all parts of the country, as well as to Almaty (the largest city in neighbouring Kazakhstan) and Kashgar, China, run mostly from the newer grand Western Bus Station; only a smaller number run from the Eastern Station.

The Dordoy Bazaar on the north-eastern outskirts of the city also contains makeshift terminals for frequent minibuses to suburban towns in all directions (from Sokuluk in the west to Tokmak in the east) and to some buses taking traders to Kazakhstan and Siberia.

As of 2007, the Bishkek-2 railway station sees only a few trains a day. It offers a popular three-day train service from Bishkek to Moscow.

There are also long-distance trains that leave for Siberia (Novosibirsk and Novokuznetsk), via Almaty, over the TurkSib route, and to Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) in the Urals, via Nur-Sultan. These services are remarkably slow (over 48 hours to Yekaterinburg), due to long stops at the border and the indirect route (the trains first have to go west for more than a 100 kilometres (62 mi) before they enter the main TurkSib line and can continue to the east or north). For example, as of the fall of 2008, train No. 305 Bishkek-Yekaterinburg was scheduled to take 11 hours to reach the Shu junction—a distance of some 269 kilometres (167 mi) by rail, and less than half of that by road.[50]

The city is served by Manas International Airport (IATA code FRU), located approximately 25 kilometres (16 mi) north-west of the city centre, and readily reachable by taxi.

In 2002, the United States obtained the right to use Manas International Airport as an air base for its military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia subsequently (2003) established an air base of its own (Kant Air Base) near Kant, some 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of Bishkek. It is based at a facility that used to be home to a major Soviet military pilot training school; one of its students, Hosni Mubarak, later became president of Egypt.