The Kazan Kremlin (tat. Kazan kirmane) is the oldest part and
citadel of Kazan, a complex of architectural, historical and
archaeological monuments that reveal the centuries-old history of
the city: archaeological remains of the first (XII-XIII centuries),
second (XIV-XV centuries) and third settlements (XV-XVI centuries),
the white-stone Kremlin itself, a number of temples and buildings of
great historical, architectural and cultural value.
Official
residence of the Head of the Republic of Tatarstan; a UNESCO World
Heritage Site since 2000 and Russia's cultural heritage of federal
significance. The main city attraction and "visiting card" of Kazan.
It is located on a cape of a high terrace on the left bank of
the Kazanka in the section of its flow in the center of the city,
more than a kilometer from its mouth. The territory of the Kremlin
is an irregular polygon in plan, repeating the outlines of the
Kremlin hill, elongated from the northwest, from the Kazanka River,
to the southeast, to May 1 Square. Longitudinal walls and slopes
face Millennium (southwest) and Palace (northeast) squares.
Ancient history
No written evidence of the emergence of the
Kremlin has been preserved to this day, but, according to the official
version, the city of Kazan was founded at the beginning of the 10th
century. At the beginning of its existence, the Kremlin was called
Kerman (tat. Kirman). There are no written sources for this.
XII-XIV centuries. Bulgar fortress
The earliest archaeological finds
were discovered in the northern part of the Kremlin, closer to Kazanka,
where there was an ancient Bulgarian fortified settlement and later,
within a century, the fortress of the Kazan Khanate. Researchers
disagree about the dating of wooden fortifications of the most ancient
period: some believe that the Bulgar trading settlement was fortified
already in the 10th century, others only in the 12th century. Regarding
the nature of the fortifications, scientists also disagree, some believe
that the stone walls were partially erected already in the 12th century,
others believe that only in the 15th or 16th century, after the
reconstruction of the Kremlin by order of Ivan the Terrible by Pskov
architects.
From the 2nd half of the 13th century to the 1st half
of the 15th century, the Kremlin turns into the center of the Kazan
principality (velayet) as part of the Golden Horde: in 1236, the Mongol
hordes led by Batu invaded the Volga Bulgaria and ravaged the capital of
Bulgar, and in 1240 Bulgaria, like the Russian principalities, finally
ended up under the control of the Golden Horde. Part of the Bulgars fled
to the Kazanka districts and founded Iske-Kazan, a city 45 kilometers
from Kazan. In 1370, the Bulgar prince Hassan laid the foundation of a
fortress on the site of the modern Kazan Kremlin, which served as the
residence of the Bulgar princes until 1445.
XV - first half of
the XVI century. Khan's fortress
After the collapse of the Golden
Horde, the Kremlin became the center of the Kazan Khanate, which existed
from 1445 to 1552. In the autumn of 1445, the Khan of the Horde
Ulu-Mukhammed with a detachment of 3,000 soldiers [1] captured Kazan,
executed the Bulgarian prince Alimbek, thus founding the Kazan Khanate
on the ruins of the Volga Bulgaria, and soon resumed the Horde system of
collecting tribute from the Moscow principality.
The Khan's
citadel (Ark) was surrounded by oak (possibly in some places stone)
walls, up to 9 meters thick with 4 travel towers: Nur-Ali (Muraleev),
Elbugin, Bolshoy and Tyumen gates. Ilisty Bulak (from the Tatar
“sleeve”, a channel connecting the Kazanka River and Kaban Lake)
protected the fortress from the west; and on the least protected
south-eastern side, the fortress was surrounded by deep ditches. The
complex of the khan's court included the palace itself (possibly the
Grand Chamber according to the Scribe Book), the khan's mosque with
mausoleums (khans of Mahmud, Mohammed-Emin, etc.), administrative and
outbuildings.
Andrey Kurbsky left such a description of Kazan:
“and from the Kazan River the mountain is so high, even with an eye look
at the cover; on it stands the city and the royal chambers and mosques
are very high, bricked, where their dead kings were laid, remembering in
number, five of them ... ”(“ bricked ”- stone).
The cathedral
mosque had, according to legend, 8 minarets, at the mosques there were
madrasas and mausoleums (durbe). There is every reason to believe that
the external appearance of the mosques was similar to the stone
buildings of the same time in Kasimov and Bulgar, where the smooth
planes of the walls contrast with the elegant carved and ceramic inserts
of decorative elements. It is also known about the presence of the
Nur-Ali mosque inside the Kremlin (closer to the modern Taynitskaya
tower) and, possibly, the Otucheva mosque.
Tezitsky (Arab. tezik
- "merchant") moat separated the Khan's citadel from the southern part,
where the building was made of wood. The khan’s close associates settled
here and there was a cemetery. Behind the fortress walls on the right
bank of the Bulak there were Dairov baths (Tan. Tҙһir munchasy).
Second half of the 16th century. Construction of the stone Kremlin
After the siege of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible in 1552, the fortress lay
in ruins. For the construction of a new white-stone Kremlin, the tsar
called on the Pskov architects Postnik Yakovlev and Ivan Shiryai (the
builders of St. Basil's Cathedral), as the chronicle tells, "The
sovereign walls, broken and burnt, edify the sovereign," for which the
Pskov elders "yes with them to the church and city master Postnik
Yakovlev yes to the Pskov masons Ivashka Shiryai and comrades, by spring
in Kazan, the new city of Kazan will be made, tidy up two hundred people
of Pskov masons, wallers and breakers, how many people will come in
handy. The fortress was significantly expanded, 6 towers (out of 13)
were built of stone (five were travel), but in the 16th century it was
possible to replace only a third of the wooden walls (with a total
length of 1800 meters) with stone ones and most of the walls and towers
of the Kremlin were built of oak. Only at the beginning of the 17th
century was the final replacement of the wooden defensive structures of
the Kazan Kremlin with stone ones.
Along with the construction of
the walls, the Pskov masters also built the first Orthodox churches of
the Kazan Kremlin: the Cathedral of the Annunciation, the Church of
Saints Cyprian and Justina, the Church of Dmitry Thessalonica at the
Dmitrievskaya Tower, the Spasskaya (in honor of the Icon of the
Not-Made-by-Hands) Church at the Spasskaya Tower, as well as two
monasteries - the Trinity Sergievsky with wooden Trinity and Sergius
churches and the Transfiguration of the Savior, with the stone church of
St. Nicholas the Ratny, as well as stone, from hewn limestone, the
basement of the wooden (in the 16th century) Transfiguration Cathedral.
For a long time (more than a century and a half), five stone
buildings of the khan's time (the khan's mosque, the khan's palace and
mausoleums) were preserved in the Kazan Kremlin, used as storage
facilities for storing weapons and ammunition, but over time they were
dismantled due to dilapidation. The Englishman Giles Fletcher left
remarkable memories of Russian Kremlin in the 16th century: “four
fortresses - Smolensk, Pskov, Kazan and Astrakhan - are built very well
and can withstand any siege ... they are revered impregnable.”
Interesting evidence of the Kremlin and the city at the turn of the
century was left in 1599 by the secretary of the Persian embassy
Oruj-bek (later converted to Christianity in Spain and further known as
Don Juan of Persia), sent to Tsar Boris Godunov: “We arrived in a very
large city belonging to the Russian Tsar. It is called Kazan and has
more than fifty thousand Christian inhabitants. There are many churches
in the city and there are so many large bells in them that it is
impossible to fall asleep on the eve of the holiday. … All the houses of
this city are wooden, but there is a large and strong fortress with
stone walls; it contains a very significant number of warriors who keep
posts at night - just like in Spain, Italy and Flanders.
17th century
After a fire in 1672, brick construction began in the
Kremlin, a number of towers, including Spasskaya, were significantly
rebuilt by Moscow (judging by stylistic criteria) architects.
18th century
As a result of the expansion of the Russian state, the
Kazan Kremlin lost its military function, but became stronger as the
administrative and cultural center of the Volga region. In 1708, the
Kazan province was formed, which was reflected in the architectural
appearance of the Kremlin, over the following centuries, the Governor's
Palace, buildings of government offices, a cadet school, a new bishop's
house, a building of a spiritual consistory were erected in it, the
Annunciation Cathedral was significantly reconstructed.
The
Pugachev uprising of 1773-1775 again turned the Kazan Kremlin into a
fortress, which the rebels fired on with cannons for two days. On July
14, 1774, the troops of Yemelyan Pugachev were forced to retreat from
Kazan. Nevertheless, Emelyan Pugachev nevertheless visited the Kazan
Kremlin - he was kept there in one of the casemates before being sent to
execution in Moscow.
Since 1774, the architect V. I. Kaftyrev
began to implement the highest approved regular plan for the urban
development of Kazan, which provided for the construction of an ensemble
of Government offices in the Kremlin. Complex construction of squares
and streets adjacent to the Kremlin began. It became its starting point
- wide streets radiated from it.
19th century
In 1800, the
publisher and educator Maxim Nevzorov left a description of the main
fortress of the vast Kazan province: “It houses the Cathedral Church of
the Annunciation, the Spaso-Preobrazhensky 2nd class monastery, the
church of Cyprian and Justina, the bishop's house with a spiritual
consistory, offices and connected with they include the
governor-general's house with all services, an artillery storehouse, a
guardhouse, an old commandant's house, prison casemates, old wooden food
and salt shops.
During the Napoleonic invasion, on the territory
of the Kazan Kremlin there was a factory for the manufacture and repair
of cannons, as well as an arsenal, abolished in 1850 [3]. By the end of
the 19th century, both the inner architectural complex of the Kremlin
itself and the modern urban ensemble surrounding it had taken shape.
20th century
After the revolution of 1917, in the 1920-1930s,
during the period of the struggle against religion, the bell tower and
the cathedral church of the Spassky Monastery, the bell tower of the
Annunciation Cathedral, the Church of Saints Cyprian and Justinia, the
Spassky Chapel at the Spasskaya Tower were destroyed in the Kazan
Kremlin, iconostases were lost, revered icons and relics of the Kremlin
churches. During the Soviet period, the archaeological study of the
Kremlin continued (since 1917: N. Borozdin, N. Kalinin, since 1976 - A.
Kh. Khalikov), begun in the 19th century by professors of Kazan
University N. P. Zagoskin, P. A. Ponomarev and other Kazan local
historians. In the 1960s, the Tatar Restoration Workshop was formed.
With the formation of the Republic of Tatarstan in 1992, the Kazan
Kremlin became the residence of the President of the Republic of
Tatarstan.
In 1993-1994, the "Main Directions for the
Reconstruction and Development of the Kazan Kremlin Complex" were
developed. On January 22, 1994, by decree of the President of the
Republic of Tatarstan, the Kazan Kremlin State Historical, Architectural
and Art Museum-Reserve was created, which marked the beginning of a
systematic scientific study and restoration of the Kremlin complex. Most
of the defensive walls were restored, as well as three towers -
Preobrazhenskaya, Taynitskaya, Voskresenskaya. The foundations of four
previously collapsed and dismantled towers were studied by
archaeologists, after which they were conserved and museumified. Also,
several objects of the 15th-16th centuries in the ancient part of the
Kremlin underwent conservation with museumification: the archaeological
remains of one of the representative buildings from the complex of the
Khan's court, the Khan's mosque, the tomb of the Kazan khans. The
construction of the mausoleum was started to reburial the remains of the
khans, recovered during the excavations.
During the excavations,
the churchyard of the Trinity Monastery, the necropolis and the “cave”
of the Transfiguration Monastery of the Savior were also discovered,
where, under the thickness of asphalt and rubble (after the explosion of
the Transfiguration Cathedral in 1930), the burial places of the locally
revered Kazan saints were preserved. With the help of strengthening the
foundations, it was possible to stop the fall of the Syuyumbike tower
(with a deviation from the axis by almost 2 meters). At the same time,
the Governor's Palace was completely restored (with the revival of the
palace enfilade planning and the front square in front of the main
facade) and the Palace Church, as well as four buildings that are part
of the Cannon Yard complex. The Cathedral of the Annunciation Cathedral
was restored in the complex of the Bishop's Court.
In 1995, work
began on the reconstruction of the legendary Kul-Sharif mosque and the
restoration of interiors: the disclosure of frescoes, the reconstruction
of the iconostasis of the Annunciation Cathedral. An underground church
in the name of "All Saints" with the necropolis of the Kazan bishops was
cleared under the cathedral, the cell of the primate of Kazan Gury,
adjacent to the cathedral from the south, was restored. The mosque
complex was originally planned as a cult, cultural, educational and
memorial center, so the Museum of Islam was placed on the lower floor of
the building.
On November 30, 2000, at the session of the UNESCO
World Heritage Committee, it was included in the UNESCO World Heritage
List.
The Kazan Kremlin absorbed the achievements of the Tatar
and Russian urban planning art; in memory of this, a monument to Tatar
and Russian architects was erected in the Kremlin in the square near the
Annunciation Cathedral.
Spectacular evening illumination has been
arranged for the Kremlin and its main objects. Panoramic classical views
of the Kremlin open from Millennium Square (the main one in the city)
and Palace Square, as well as from the Kremlin Dam.
Walls and towers
After the completion of the construction of walls
and towers by Pskov architects, the Kremlin had 13 towers, of which 5
were travel, 7 round and 1 five-sided in plan. Due to dilapidation in
the 19th century, the North, East, Five-sided and one nameless western
tower were dismantled.
During the reconstruction in the first
half of the 18th century, the Spasskaya and Taynitskaya towers were
built on with additional brick tiers, the Preobrazhenskaya,
Konsistorskaya and the second unnamed Western towers also acquired brick
completions. In the 19th century, the Dmitrovskaya Tower was dismantled,
a passage arch appeared in its place, and the Voskresenskaya Tower lost
the gate church. In the late 1920s, a through passage was made in the
Spasskaya Tower (previously, the entrance was through a side gate in the
wall).
The spins between the towers originally ended with
straight battlements covered with a hewn roof, and by the 17-18
centuries they acquired the appearance of a battle wall with arched
decorations - “swallowtails” on its facade. The masonry of the walls and
towers was made with lime mortar.
Kremlin towers
The following
lists the Kremlin towers clockwise.
Spasskaya Tower. Built in the
second half of the 16th century by Pskov architects Ivan Shiryai and
Postnik Yakovlev. On the inner, northern side of the fortress, the
Spasskaya Tower adjoined the gate church of the same name, which by now
has become one with the tower. Its typical Pskov facade in terms of
architectural elements faces the main street of the Kremlin. At the end
of the 17th century, instead of 3 tiers, the tower was built on with two
brick 8-sided tiers with a brick tent, having received its current,
habitual appearance for Kazan people. Until the middle of the 19th
century, there was a moat with a stone bridge in front of the tower. In
1905, the outer military chapel (at the gate church in the name of the
Savior Not Made by Hands) was rebuilt; it was destroyed by the Soviet
authorities in the late 1920s for a through passage through the
tower.[4][5]. Until 1917, the tower was crowned with the double-headed
coat of arms of the Russian state, in the upper tier in the 18th century
a “chiming” clock was installed and even earlier a large alarm bell was
transferred from a small belfry (now lost, located on the wall on the
left side of the tower).
The southwestern tower was built
simultaneously with the Spasskaya tower by Pskov craftsmen and is a
classic example of the Pskov style of defensive structures.
Transfiguration tower. The tower received its name from the
Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery of the Kremlin, which it enclosed from
the northwest. Despite the fact that the Preobrazhenskaya Tower was also
built by the Pskov architects Postnik and Barma, it may have been
significantly rebuilt later, as it has strong traces of the
architectural influence of Moscow defensive architecture. The territory
from the Transfiguration Tower to the Spasskaya passageway was added to
the old Khan's fortress by Pskov craftsmen.
The multifaceted
(five-sided) tower was also built by Pskov architects. Collapsed at the
end of the 18th century; the skeleton, on which the observation deck was
equipped, has been preserved.
The nameless round tower is a brick
building, built, presumably, by Moscow architects in the 17th century.
The northwestern tower was demolished at the beginning of the 20th
century. The skeleton has been preserved.
The Tainitskaya Tower -
erected in its present form in the 1550s by Postnik Yakovlev, got its
name from a hidden spring from which water could be taken during a siege
(similar "secret" springs were at the Vodovzvodnaya, the corner Arsenal
and Moskvoretskaya (Beklemishevskaya) towers of the Moscow Kremlin ).
The entrance to the tower is made in the form of a "knee", which
increased the defense capability of the Kremlin. In the place of the
Taynitskaya tower during the time of the Khanate, there was the Nur Ali
tower (in Russian transcription - Muraleeva). It was through the
Muraleev Tower that the 22-year-old Tsar Ivan the Terrible entered the
conquered city.
North Round Tower. The skeleton has been
preserved. Built by Moscow architects in the 17th century. Dismantled
after the Pugachev siege of Kazan.
The Resurrection Tower was
built in brick, presumably (according to stylistic criteria), by Moscow
architects in the 1670s. The pass has a square shape.
The
northeastern round tower was dismantled after the Pugachev assault.
Dmitrievskaya travel tower was dismantled after the Pugachev
assault. It received its name from the church next to it in honor of the
Holy Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessalonica. From this tower began the
path to the Arskaya road.
The Consistory Tower was built in brick
by Moscow architects in the 17th century; it got its name in the 18th
century from the Spiritual Consistory located next to the tower in the
Kremlin. You can climb the tower and walk along the stretch of the wall
- towards the South-Eastern tower. Near the tower, archaeological
excavations revealed the so-called. "tezitsky" (tezik from Arabic -
"merchant") ditch, which went from the Konsistorskaya tower to the
Preobrazhenskaya; the well-known archaeologist N. Kalinin and a number
of scientists considered the Tezitsky ditch to be the southern border of
the Khan's fortress.
The South-East Round Tower is a striking
example of Pskov architecture of the 16th century.
Kul Sharif Mosque - the main Juma mosque of the Republic of Tatarstan
and Kazan (since 2005); located on the territory of the Kazan Kremlin.
The construction of the mosque building began in 1996 as a
recreation of the legendary multi-minaret mosque of the capital of the
Kazan Khanate, the center of religious education and the development of
sciences in the Middle Volga region of the 16th century. The mosque was
destroyed in October 1552 during the assault on Kazan by the troops of
Ivan the Terrible. Named in honor of her last imam seid Kul-Sharif, one
of the leaders of the defense of Kazan.
The 36 m high dome is
decorated with forms associated with the image and decorative details of
the Kazan Hat. The height of each of the four main minarets is 58
meters. The architectural and artistic solution of the external
appearance of the mosque was achieved through the development of
semantic elements that bring the architecture of the mosque closer to
local traditions. Built of white marble and granite, the dome and
minarets are turquoise.
Built in the 16th century by Pskov architects Ivan Shiryai and
Postnik Yakovlev. The white-stone cross-domed cathedral was originally
almost half the size of the modern temple, which expanded as a result of
several reconstructions. The arch rests on 6 round pillars, as in the
Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. The domes of the cathedral
in the 16th century were helmet-shaped. At the end of the 16th century,
side aisles were added to the building: the northern one in the name of
St. Peter and Fevronia of Murom and southern in the name of St. princes
Boris and Gleb, connected by a porch, which went around the central
cube-shaped volume of the cathedral.
In the 18th and 19th
centuries, a number of alterations radically changed the appearance of
the cathedral, especially the view from the west side. In 1736, the
helmet-shaped domes were replaced with onion ones, and the central dome
was completed in the form of the so-called “bath” in the Ukrainian
Baroque style. Next to the cathedral stood the Church of the Nativity,
built in 1694 under Metropolitan Markell of Kazan. By 1821, the Church
of the Nativity was badly dilapidated and the technical commission
proposed to build a new warm building in its place. Emperor Nicholas I,
who visited Kazan in 1836, proposed to build a new warm refectory of the
Cathedral of the Annunciation on the site of the Nativity Church,
expanding the cathedral to the west. According to the project of the
Kazan provincial architect (1834-1844) Foma Petondi (1794-1874), the
cathedral was expanded to the west, north and south, for which the
one-story refectory and the old porch of the 18th century were
demolished. This reconstruction made the cathedral more convenient for
prayer, but greatly changed its original harmonious appearance. Since
then, the exterior of the cathedral has not changed, except for the
destruction of the porch of the cathedral built according to the Petondi
project, demolished after the revolution, and the magnificent 5-tiered
bell tower of the 17th century, which kept the largest bell of
pre-revolutionary Kazan, was destroyed in 1928. Its weight was 1,500
pounds (about 24,570 kg).
In dating the construction of the tower, scientists disagree. In the
authoritative work “Kazan in the monuments of history and culture. Ed.
S. S. Aidarova, A. Kh. Khalikov, M. Kh. Khasanova, I. N. Aleeva” the
tower is tentatively dated to 1645-1650. Supporters of the hypothesis
that the tower appeared after 1552 as a sentinel point to the similarity
of the Syuyumbike tower with the Borovitskaya tower of the Moscow
Kremlin. The well-known Kazan local historian, professor of the Kazan
Imperial University N.P. Zagoskin in the 19th century considered the
issue of dating the tower open and inclined to the version of its
occurrence in the Khan period. It is possible that the tower was built
during the reign of Khan Shah-Ali, who established good relations with
the Moscow prince. There are suggestions that to build the tower, the
Moscow prince could send to Kazan the craftsmen who built the Moscow
Kremlin, which could eventually affect its similarity with the
Borovitskaya tower.
The tower consists of 7 tiers: the first
three tiers are square in plan and have open galleries, the remaining
four are octagonal. The tower is completed by a 6-sided brick tent
(height 58 meters or 34 fathoms 6 feet), which until 1917 was crowned
with a double-headed eagle resting on a gilded "apple" (according to the
legends of the Kazan Tatars, important documents related to history and
culture were concluded in the ball Tatars). The edges of all tiers are
decorated with spatulas or thin brick rollers. In the lower tier of the
tower there is a through passage. On the western and eastern facades,
the pylons of the lower tier have 2 attached columns of the Corinthian
order, crossed in the middle of the height by "typically Russian
horizontal rollers". The walls are brick, the mortar is lime, the
foundation rests on oak piles. From 1917 to the 1930s, the Russian coat
of arms was replaced with a crescent, in the 1930s the crescent was
removed, in the 1990s the crescent was again erected on the tower. The
tower is included in the list of forty falling towers of the world. Its
deviation from the vertical is 2 meters. The deviation occurred due to
subsidence of the foundation in one part. To date, the fall of the tower
has been stopped.
The Palace of the Kazan Governor is located in the northern part of
the Kremlin, in the place where in ancient times there was the palace of
the Kazan khans, and in the 18th century - the chief commandant's house.
The building was built in the 40s. XIX century in the so-called.
pseudo-Byzantine style[9]. The project of the “house of the military
governor with premises for the imperial apartments” was compiled by the
famous Moscow architect K. A. Ton, the author of the project of the
Grand Kremlin Palace and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.
Initially, according to usage, it was called the Governor's Palace.
During the Soviet period, the building housed the Presidium of the
Supreme Council and the Council of Ministers of the Tatar ASSR.
Currently, it is the residence of the Head of the Republic of Tatarstan.
The palace consists of the main building and the circumference of
services adjoining the courtyard. The construction of the palace was
supervised by the architect A. I. Peske, sent from St. Petersburg, who
rebuilt Kazan after the city fire of 1842. The interior decoration was
carried out under the guidance of the architect M. P. Korinfsky, one of
the architects of the Kazan Imperial University complex. The center of
the main façade is a risalit, completed by a front with three keeled
arches, possibly similar to the architecture of the Khan's palace. The
building has two porches on 2 order columns with arched doorways. The
first and second floors are divided by a row of order pilasters and
arched window openings. The façade is a semicircle in plan and has a
passage to the courtyard of the palace. The eclectic decor of the
building combines elements of Russian classicism (corinthian division,
rustication of the 1st floor, general symmetry), baroque (unfastening of
the entablature over the beams of columns of the main risalit, the
nature of the pediments of the porticos) and Old Russian architecture
(hanging weights of the twin arches of the windows of the 2nd floor,
keeled zakomaras of the central risalit, the nature of the figured
supports of the arched suspension passage to the Palace Church).
In front of the palace there is a square with a multi-tiered fountain
with a figure of Zilant, the symbol of Kazan. The area has a fence and
security, there is no free access to it.
In the authoritative work “Kazan in the monuments of history and
culture. Ed. S. S. Aidarova, A. Kh. Khalikova, M. Kh. Khasanova, I. N.
Aleeva" the authors tend to believe that the Palace Church "was erected
on the spot where the Nur-Ali mosque stood during the Kazan Khanate",
however this version is based on later sources (explications to the city
plan of 1768, where the temple is indicated as “a church turned from a
mosque”) and is one of the hypotheses of the history of the Vvedenskaya
(consecrated in the 19th century in honor of the Descent of the Holy
Spirit) church.
The Vvedenskaya Church was badly damaged by fire
in 1815 and stood in ruins for a long time. By order of Nicholas I, who
visited Kazan in 1836, the church was restored according to the
"highest" project approved in 1852 as a palace at the Governor's Palace.
In 1859 the church was consecrated in honor of the Descent of the Holy
Spirit. The new temple accurately reproduced the constructive scheme and
stylistic features of the former Vvedenskaya Church, the architectural
analogues of which in Kazan can be considered the destroyed Vvedensky
Cathedral of the Kizichesky Monastery, and the Resurrection Cathedral of
the New Jerusalem Monastery (“Bishops’ Dacha”), which also had covered
arched galleries and a stepped scheme of volumes. The palace church
itself in the name of the Descent of the Holy Spirit with the chapel of
the holy martyr Empress Alexandra occupied only the second floor, on the
first floor there was a chapel in the name of Nicholas the Wonderworker,
the temple icon to which was donated in the middle of the 19th century
by Anna Davydovna Boratynskaya.
The alternation of 4 and 8-sided
volumes, the stepped structure of the church itself, is consonant with
the stepped architecture of the Syuyumbike tower, surpassing the
watchtower in the richness of decoration. Now here is the Museum of the
History of the Statehood of the Tatar People and the Republic of
Tatarstan.
Founded in the 16th century by Saint Barsanuphius. During the period
of the Kazan Khanate, on the territory that was at that time outside the
walls of the fortress, on the site where the ruins of the museum complex
of the Spassky Monastery are currently located, there was a cemetery.
This territory continued to serve as a necropolis in subsequent
centuries: “at least a thousand people rested in the ancient monastery
necropolis during the 15th-20th centuries (including burials of the
period of the Kazan Khanate). So it is multi-layered (up to 6-8 levels)
and multinational.”
The fraternal building has been preserved in
the northern part of the monastery; a brick fence on the eastern side of
the monastery, the Church of St. Nicholas Ratny, reconstructed in the
forms of the 19th century (which served as a teahouse in the military
unit located here in Soviet times); basement of the Cathedral of the
Transfiguration blown up in the 1930s; the foundation of the monastery
bell tower destroyed after 1917 with the church of St. Barbara in the
lower tier, the foundation of the church in the name of Saints Cyprian
and Justinia.
The 2-story building of the governor's office - government offices - is located on the right side of the main Kremlin street and the Spasskaya Tower. The project was drawn up by V. I. Kaftyrev, who was sent by the Senate to Kazan in 1767 to detail the general plan of the city, developed by the commission of St. Petersburg and Moscow after the great fire in Kazan in 1765. The second floor was the main one, where senior officials and important visitors climbed the main staircase, and where the “audience” hall was located in front of the “judicial chamber” - the central hall with 4 windows. Adjacent to it were the "secret" and "secretary", in the remaining rooms were "principal servants". The building has a basement floor with vaulted rooms. To get to the long courtyard between the building of government offices and the eastern section of the Kremlin wall, the building has two through passages dividing the building into 3 sections. On the north side of the building adjoins the building of the former Consistory.
The ensemble of the Cannon Yard consists of four buildings. One of
the largest artillery yards in Russia for the manufacture and repair of
artillery pieces was located here. The Kazan Arsenal contributed to the
victory of Russian weapons in the war of 1812. After a fire in 1815,
artillery production began to decline, and in 1850 the Kazan Arsenal
ceased to exist. In 1998, a casting pit from the end of the 17th century
was discovered here, which was opened to visitors after restoration work
in 2017. Now it is located on the territory of the Museum of the Cannon
Yard, which was opened in 2013. Also in the complex of the Cannon Yard
is the Museum of Weapons "Spirit of the Warrior".
Consistor's
Palace
The Consistorial Palace is the northern building of the Cannon
Yard; it has a main entrance not from inside it, but from the northern
inner slope. The building of the spiritual department in the XIX
century. In Soviet times, the building housed the Ministry of Health of
the TASSR. Currently, the office and apparatus of the Head of Tatarstan.
bishop's house
From the establishment of the Kazan diocese in
1555 until the revolution of 1917, the residence of the Orthodox bishops
who ruled the Kazan diocese (coinciding in territory with the Kazan
province and earlier with the "Kazan kingdom") was in the Kazan Kremlin.
The Bishop's House is a typical administrative building of the 19th
century. The central and side risalits face the eastern wall. After the
Pugachev siege of the Kremlin and the fires, the bishop's house was
uninhabitable for many years and needed serious restoration. At the
direction of Emperor Nicholas I, who visited Kazan in 1836, funds were
allocated for the restoration of the Bishop's House, and already in
1841, the Archbishop of Kazan and Sviyazhsky Vladimir (Uzhinsky) moved
from the suburban residence of the Kazan bishops - the Resurrection New
Jerusalem Monastery - to the Kremlin.
Junker School
On the
left side of the main Kremlin street there is a building built in the
middle of the 19th century for the cadet school on the site where the
Trinity Monastery was located before the abolition in the 18th century
(founded in the 16th century), and later in the 18th-19th centuries - an
arsenal and an artillery yard, where in 1812-15 there was one of the
largest cannon factories in Russia, new cannons and parts for them were
manufactured, and damaged ones brought from the army were repaired.
The building was built by architect P. G. Pyatnitsky (architect of
Kazan University buildings) “in the style of late Russian classicism”,
as indicated by a clear symmetrical layout, high bright classrooms on
the sides of the central corridor, a strict exterior of the building and
facade decoration elements: profiled architraves and rustication on the
first floor. The main entrance is punctuated by a hinged metal pediment.
This building houses the Museum of Natural History of the Republic
of Tatarstan, the Khazine National Art Gallery, a branch of the State
Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg) and the Museum-Memorial of the Great
Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
Arena
The drill arena for the
exercises of the Kazan Military School was built in the 1880s according
to the project of 1881, made in St. Petersburg. The engineering solution
of the roof of the building made it possible to cover a significant area
(18 x 56 meters) with single-span truss structures. After the 2003-2006
restoration in the building is supposed to arrange storage and reading
room of the Museum of Ancient Books and Manuscripts.
Guardhouse
building
It is located in the southeast corner, to the right of the
main entrance of the Spasskaya Tower. The building was built in the 19th
century on the site where, since the 18th century, there was a stone
storehouse - a warehouse of military property at the provincial office,
which stood nearby. The architecture of the building is extremely
ascetic.
The six-pillared 5-domed cathedral of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky
Monastery (1596-1601; blown up in the 1930s);
The five-tiered bell
tower of the Annunciation Cathedral (XVII century, destroyed in 1928);
Church of Saints Cyprian and Justinia, the first church in Kazan (1595,
demolished in 1932);
Bell tower with the church of St. Barbarians in
the lower tier (destroyed after 1917).
In addition to the temples and
gate churches of the Savior and Resurrection mentioned above, since the
16th century, the churches of the Descent of the Holy Spirit (Garrison),
Dmitry of Thessalonica and Troitskaya (Sergievskaya) have been operating
on the territory of the Kremlin.
Archaeological research of the
Kazan Kremlin
Archaeological research was started in the 19th century
by Kazan local historians, Professor of Kazan University Nikolai
Zagoskin and Pavel Ponomarev, who explored the foundation pit on the
site of the cadet school building under construction. Significant
archaeological excavations were carried out in the 1920s by N. F.
Kalinin and N. A. Bashkirov. Systematic studies conducted since 1971
under the leadership of L. S. Shavokhin and Alfred Khalikov made it
possible to determine the stratigraphy of cultural deposits. In the
1990s, a number of archaeological studies were carried out, in
particular, they did not confirm the version that the Cathedral of the
Annunciation was built on the site of the main mosque of the Khanate: no
foundations of buildings from the period of the Kazan Khanate were found
under the cathedral.
Organizations operating in the Kazan Kremlin
Office of the Head of Tatarstan
Museum of Islamic Culture
Museum
of Natural History of Tatarstan
Museum of the History of Statehood of
the Republic of Tatarstan and the Tatar People
The Hermitage-Kazan
Center is a branch of the State Hermitage
National Art Gallery
"Khazine"
Memorial of the Great Patriotic War