<p>Billed as the world's largest tent by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and its designers, the Khan Shatyr opened on July 5 in Astana, <a id="zkzf" title="Kazakhstan" href="http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/kazakhstan-guide/">Kazakhstan</a>.</p><p>The leaning, needle-tipped leisure center is designed to evoke a yurt, which "has great resonance in Kazakh history as a traditional nomadic building form," said Nigel Dancey, a senior partner at <a id="ymih" title="Foster Partners" href="http://www.fosterandpartners.com/Practice/Default.aspx">Foster Partners</a>, the London-based architecture firm behind the design.</p><p>"Khan Shatyr roughly translates as 'the tent of the khan, or king,'" Dancey added.<br><br> The Khan Shatyr's debut comes more than a dozen years after President Nazarbayev moved the Kazakh capital from Almaty to the relatively cold and isolated north-central city of Astana—then called Aqmola—in 1997 (<a id="qdvd" title="Kazakhstan map" href="http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/map-machine#s=r&amp;c=47.95926520055656, 66.90221607685089&amp;z=4">Kazakhstan map</a>).</p><p><em>—Ker Than</em></p>