Villas on the bluff

IYIK JANYL — For more than a century the people of Iyık Janyl have climbed to Shahr-i Khunuk to escape the heat. The quarter, whose Persian name means "cool town", sits on a bluff above the river on the upper side of the city, where orchards shade the teahouses along Khunuk Creek and the air is noticeably cooler on a July afternoon.

In the 19th century merchants and clergy of the holy city built summer houses there, and in the Soviet period it became an area of dachas and holiday homes. Since the 2000s many of the old houses have been pulled down and replaced by private villas of two and three stories, with high walls and gates, many of them built by buyers from Talas and Nurzhan.

Local heritage groups say the quarter is losing the character that brings visitors to it. "You could walk up the creek and see a porch carved in 1890 and an old woman selling apricots in front of it," said a member of one group. "Now you see a wall."

Officials of the Iyık Janyl city government said new houses in the quarter had building permits and complied with the law. With the Feast of St. Janyl a week away, the teahouses on the creek were full yesterday.