Green Bazaar (Zelyony Bazaar)

The Zelyony Bazaar (Green Bazaar) is Almaty's main covered market and one of the most vivid places in the city. The building occupies an entire block on Zhibek Zholy and operates on two levels: fruit and vegetables downstairs, dried goods, spices, nuts, and honey on the upper floor, with a separate meat hall where the display can surprise the uninitiated.

This is not a tourist market — it is where Almaty residents shop for the ingredients of their everyday cooking. The produce comes from across Central Asia and is typically fresher and better value than anywhere else in the city. Summer is the best time to visit, when the fruit — melons, apricots, cherries — is at its peak. The tea rooms and small cafés around the edges of the market are a good place to sit and watch the city's mixing of cultures play out. Bargaining is standard; prices are generally fair.

things to do market sight
A story
The Green Bazaar takes its name from the Soviet-era practice of calling fresh food markets "green markets" to distinguish them from industrial goods bazaars. What is sold here now — fermented mare's milk (kumiss), dried apricots and figs from Uzbekistan, slabs of smoked horse meat, honey from the mountains in a dozen varieties, and sheep heads staring from the butchers' stalls — is the accumulated food culture of Central Asia in a single building.