Kazan Kremlin
UNESCO-listed walled citadel above the Kazanka, with the Qolsharif Mosque and the leaning Soyembika Tower.
The Kazan Kremlin occupies a limestone bluff where the Kazanka meets the Volga, on the site of the citadel of the Khanate of Kazan. After Ivan the Terrible took the city in 1552, Pskov masons rebuilt the fortifications in white stone, and the walls, gate towers and the Annunciation Cathedral of 1562 survive from that campaign. The complex was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2000 as the only surviving Tatar fortress with substantial pre-conquest remains, and as an unusual meeting of Tatar and Russian building traditions.
Inside the walls stand the Governor's Palace of the 1840s by Konstantin Thon, now the residence of the President of Tatarstan, and the brick Soyembika Tower, which leans noticeably and is the subject of several legends. The Qolsharif Mosque, with its four blue minarets, was completed in 2005 to mark Kazan's millennium and recalls the mosque destroyed in 1552. The reserve also runs museums of Islamic culture, Tatar statehood, natural history and the Cannon Yard, and the Hermitage-Kazan exhibition centre.
Highlights
- Qolsharif Mosque, rebuilt for Kazan's millennium in 2005
- Leaning brick Soyembika Tower over the Kazanka
- Annunciation Cathedral of 1562 by Pskov masons
- Hermitage-Kazan centre showing loans from the State Hermitage
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