Qazan Kremlin
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- Postnik Yakovlev and Barma, the Pskov masters who rebuilt the kremlin in stone, are the same builders credited with St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow.
- The Annunciation Cathedral is the only 16th-century Russian church with six piers and five apses.
- The cathedral's five-tier bell tower was built to resemble Moscow's Ivan the Great Bell Tower, but was pulled down by the Soviets in 1930.
- The khans' citadel had oak walls with four gate towers, and according to tradition its main mosque had eight minarets.
- For more than 150 years after 1552, five stone buildings of the khans' era, including mosques and mausoleums, survived as arms stores before being dismantled.
- Yemelyan Pugachev's rebels shelled the kremlin for two days in 1774, and Pugachev himself was later held in one of its casemates before his execution.
- During the Napoleonic Wars a cannon foundry and arsenal operated inside the kremlin walls.
- The Secret Tower in the northern wall takes its name from a hidden well that once secured the fortress's water supply.
- In 2005 the Annunciation Cathedral received a revered copy of the icon of Our Lady of Kazan, returned to Russia the year before by Pope John Paul II.
- Excavations have uncovered traces of three successive fortified settlements on the hill, the earliest a Volga Bulgar stronghold of the 12th–13th centuries.
Why it is worth it
The white-walled citadel of Kazan is where two worlds meet. It stands on the site of the fortress of the Kazan khans, which Ivan the Terrible's army captured in 1552; the tsar then had it rebuilt in stone by Pskov masters Postnik Yakovlev and Ivan Shiryay, known as Barma. Their Annunciation Cathedral, built between 1554 and 1562 from local pale sandstone rather than brick, is the oldest building inside. The walls and towers themselves date from the 16th and 17th centuries, with later renovations, and the Spasskaya Tower at the southern end still serves as the main gate.
The kremlin's most famous silhouette is the leaning Söyembikä Tower, probably from the reign of Peter the Great, which local legend links to the last queen of the Kazan Khanate. Nearby stands the Governor's House, designed by Konstantin Thon and built in 1843–1853, now the residence of the President of Tatarstan. Several churches of the Spassky Monastery were destroyed in the Stalin years, but the balance swung back after 1995: the Kul Sharif Mosque, raised on the presumed site of the khanate's main mosque, opened in 2005, and in the same year the Annunciation Cathedral was restored to worship.
That pairing of a great mosque and an Orthodox cathedral inside one fortress is what makes the Kazan Kremlin unusual,. UNESCO inscribed the Kazan Kremlin as a World Heritage Site in 2000.
Getting there
The kremlin is in central Kazan, about 1 km from the city centre, and the metro station Kremlyovskaya has exits right next to it. Kazan International Airport (KZN) is around 24 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Kazan Kremlin is the chief historic citadel of Kazan, a city in Russia. It was built at the behest of Ivan the Terrible on the ruins of the former castle of Kazan khans. It was declared a World Heritage Site in 2000.
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