Kazan is one of Russia's most fascinating cities because it is two cities at once. It is Russian and it is Tatar; it is Orthodox and it is Muslim; it looks towards Moscow and it looks towards the East. At the heart of its white kremlin, a World Heritage Site, the great Qolşärif mosque, with its turquoise domes and minarets, rises just a few metres from a golden-domed Orthodox cathedral, and nobody sees any contradiction in that. These centuries of coexistence between the Slavic and Turkic worlds are the essence of Kazan and what make it unique.
The capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, on the banks of the Volga, Kazan was in the Middle Ages the capital of a powerful Tatar khanate that inherited the legacy of the Golden Horde, until Ivan the Terrible conquered it in 1552. That clash and the long history that followed gave rise to a mixed, wealthy and proud city that today is one of Russia's most prosperous and dynamic: a university city (the young Lenin studied here and the mathematician Lobachevsky taught here), a sporting city and one with delicious Tatar food.
This guide explores Kazan with a practical and warm eye: what to see in the kremlin and the old Tatar quarter, how to get around on its metro, where to try echpochmak and chak-chak, and how to escape to the island-monastery of Sviyazhsk or the ancient city of Bolgar. First, though, a sober warning: travelling to Russia today, in the middle of a war and under sanctions, comes with real restrictions (official travel advice, no direct flights, foreign cards that don't work). Take this guide for what it is: an informative and cultural read about an extraordinary place.
Kazan began as a stronghold of Volga Bulgaria, a medieval Turkic and Muslim state, and tradition places its founding around the year 1005. After the Mongol invasion, the region became part of the Golden Horde, and when that broke up, the Khanate of Kazan emerged in the 15th century, a powerful Tatar state with this city as its capital. In 1552, after a famous siege, the Russian tsar Ivan IV 'the Terrible' conquered Kazan and brought it into Russia; to commemorate that victory he had St Basil's Cathedral built in Moscow. The conquest was followed by a harsh policy of Christianisation, but Tatar and Muslim identity survived. Under Catherine the Great, in the 18th century, mosque building was allowed again and the city flourished as a commercial and cultural centre between Europe and Asia. In the 19th century Kazan became a great university city (its university, founded in 1804, is one of the oldest in Russia). In the 20th century it was the capital of the Tatar autonomous republic within the USSR and, after 1991, of the Republic of Tatarstan within the Russian Federation, with a status of broad autonomy. In 2000, the Kazan Kremlin was declared a World Heritage Site, and in 2005 the city celebrated its millennium with the opening of the great Qolşärif mosque, rebuilt in place of the one Ivan the Terrible had destroyed. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Russia's great mother river and the mixed south: Tatar Kazan, the Stalingrad that turned a world war, and the subtropical balcony on the Black Sea.
Read the history of The Volga and the south →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before Moscow existed as a power, a prosperous and surprising state flourished on the lands of the middle Volga: Volga Bulgaria. It was a kingdom of Turkic peoples, related to the Bulgars who gave their name to present-day Balkan Bulgaria, and around 922 it officially adopted Islam, centuries before Russia became fully Christian. Volga Bulgaria was a crossroads of trade routes between the Islamic world, the Baltic and the steppes. Kazan was born on its territory, at a strategic spot beside the river.
Tradition places the founding of the city around 1005, and in 2005 Kazan officially celebrated its millennium with big festivities and the opening of the Qolşärif Mosque. The name 'Kazan' (Qazan in Tatar) is usually linked to the Turkic word for a cauldron or cooking pot. There are several legends about its origin, one of them about a golden cauldron that fell into the river.
In the 13th century, Volga Bulgaria was devastated by the great Mongol invasion led by Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan. The Volga lands became part of the vast Mongol empire, and more precisely of the khanate known as the Golden Horde, which dominated the Russian principalities and collected tribute from them for more than two centuries. Kazan survived the catastrophe and gradually grew in importance as the centre of the region.
During the 15th century the Golden Horde, weakened by internal struggles, broke up into several independent khanates. One of them, which emerged around 1438, had its capital in Kazan: the Khanate of Kazan. It was a Turkic and Muslim state, heir to the traditions of Volga Bulgaria and the Horde, and for a little over a century it ruled the middle Volga and much of the surrounding region.
Kazan then became a true capital: a walled city with its fortress (the beginnings of the future kremlin), mosques, madrasas, markets and palaces. The city was a major trading hub where merchants from Russia, Central Asia, Persia and the Baltic world came together. Tatar culture, with its Turkic language, Islamic faith, art and science, reached a remarkable peak there.
The khanate had a tense and shifting relationship with the growing power of Muscovy, the Russian principality that was expanding eastwards. There were periods of alliance, of vassalage and of open war. For the tsars of Moscow, Kazan was both a military threat, since its raids reached far, and a coveted prize: whoever controlled Kazan would control the Volga and the route to Siberia and the Caspian. A clash became inevitable.
Kazan's fate was sealed in 1552. The young Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, whom history would remember as Ivan 'the Terrible', was determined to put an end to the khanate and organised a large-scale military campaign. As a supply base, he had a wooden fortress built upriver in sections that could be taken apart. It was floated down the Volga and put together on the island of Sviyazhsk, a few kilometres from Kazan. From there a huge Russian army, backed by artillery and by sappers who mined the walls, laid siege to the city.
The siege ended in October 1552 with a bloody assault. The Tatars resisted fiercely. One of the defenders who stood out was Sayyid Qolşärif, a religious leader who died fighting alongside his students, and whose name the great mosque bears today. The city was taken, looted and largely destroyed, mosques included. The fall of Kazan meant the end of the khanate and the permanent incorporation of the whole middle Volga into Russia, a decisive milestone in the Russian state's expansion eastwards.
To commemorate the victory, Ivan the Terrible ordered the construction of St Basil's Cathedral on Red Square in Moscow, with its unmistakable coloured domes, today a universal image of Russia. After the conquest came a policy of Christianisation and of settling Russians in the area. For a long time Tatars were forbidden to live inside the city, which pushed them into their own districts such as the Staro-Tatarskaya Sloboda. Even so, Tatar identity and the Muslim faith survived.
After the conquest, Kazan became fully part of tsarist Russia as the capital of a vast Volga province (guberniya). The city was rebuilt around the new white-stone kremlin, put up on Ivan the Terrible's orders by master builders brought from Pskov, and it became an important administrative, military and commercial centre on the empire's eastern frontier.
A turning point for the Tatar population came in the 18th century under Empress Catherine the Great. Her policy of greater religious tolerance once again allowed stone mosques to be built. The first was the Al-Marjani Mosque in the Tatar quarter, which still stands. This opening encouraged a Tatar cultural, religious and economic revival that lasted through the 18th and 19th centuries, with a prosperous merchant class and a lively intellectual life.
Kazan also became a great city of learning. Its university, founded in 1804, is one of the oldest in Russia and produced world-class figures. It was there that the mathematician Nikolai Lobachevsky developed non-Euclidean geometry. The young Vladimir Ulyanov, the future Lenin, also passed through its lecture halls, very briefly and stormily, before being expelled for taking part in student protests. The 19th century also saw literature and a press in the Tatar language flourish, and figures such as the poet Ğabdulla Tuqay (Tukay) became national symbols.
The 1917 Revolution and the Russian Civil War hit the Volga hard. In 1918 Kazan saw fierce fighting between the Red Army and the anti-Bolshevik forces (the Whites and the Czechoslovak Legion), who briefly took the city. After the Bolshevik victory, and as part of Soviet nationalities policy, the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created in 1920 with Kazan as its capital. It gave the Tatar nation formal territorial recognition within the new state for the first time.
During the Soviet decades, Kazan became a major industrial city. Aviation, chemical and machinery plants were set up, and the population grew rapidly. Like many inland cities, during the Second World War it took in industries, institutions and evacuees from areas threatened by the German advance, contributing to the Soviet war effort from behind the front lines.
The Soviet era also had a dark side for Tatar culture. The Tatar language switched from the Arabic alphabet to the Latin one and then to Cyrillic, mosques were closed and religious life was repressed, as across the whole country. Even so, Tatar identity endured, and Kazan kept its bicultural character, with a mixed population of Russians and Tatars living side by side in the same city.
As the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the Tatar republic went through a period of strong assertion of its identity. Its sovereignty was proclaimed in 1990, and after years of negotiations a treaty was signed with Moscow in 1994 that gave Tatarstan a broad degree of autonomy within the Russian Federation, with its own constitution, its own presidency and two official languages, Russian and Tatar. Kazan thus became the capital of a republic that presents itself as a bridge between the Slavic and Turkic worlds, and as a model of coexistence between Orthodox Christians and Muslims.
The symbol of this revival was the city's millennium celebration in 2005. For it, the kremlin was restored, the first metro line opened and, above all, the new Qolşärif Mosque was built, a reconstruction of the one Ivan the Terrible had destroyed four and a half centuries earlier. UNESCO had already inscribed the kremlin as a World Heritage Site in 2000, recognising its value as a unique testimony to cultural coexistence.
Since then, Kazan has enjoyed a period of prosperity and growing visibility. It has thrown itself into sport and major events (it was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and has hosted world swimming championships and Universiades), modernised its historic centre and promoted its Tatar food and culture as a draw for visitors. Today it is one of the most dynamic, safe and pleasant cities in Russia. It is worth remembering, soberly, that in the current context of war and international sanctions, travel to the country comes with real restrictions. This guide is offered for strictly informational and cultural purposes, without ignoring official travel advice.
