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The Kazan Kremlin
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
"This town ... has a formidable location and is protected by the castle built of bricks. In the fortress there stands the cathedral, the archbishop's and governor's quarters and the district chancellery. A ditch and a fence surround the town. In the suburbs, there live craftsmen, save one or two streets, where live the Mohammedan Tatars born in those parts: they live rather tidily and are independent in their worship, and they enjoy many liberties. They are involved in trade with Turkey and Persia and other countries, and some of them are very rich."
The Pugachev uprising of 1773-1775 once again turned the Kazan Kremlin into a fortress, which was for two days unsuccessfully bombarded by the rebels. On July 14, 1774, Emelyan Pugachev's troops were forced to retreat from Kazan, and on September 8 of that year, Pugachev himself was captured and handed over to the Russian authorities. However, he did eventually succeed in entering the Kazan Kremlin - on the way to his execution in Moscow he was kept in one of its dungeons. The attempted storming by Pugachev was the last in the military history of the Kremlin. It finally became the administrative and religious centre of Kazan, and in 1800 the publisher and educator Maxim Nevzorov made a detailed description of the main Kremlin buildings for posterity, and at the same time gave a clear picture of the Kremlin's historical role in the urban formation of the present-day Tatar capital:
"(Kazan) ... presents the fairest and, in the whole of Russia, the best city after Moscow and Saint Petersburg. ... It can be divided into two parts: the citadel and the city beyond it, where the citizens actually dwell. ... In the citadel, there is the cathedral church of the Annunciation, the Spaso-Preobrazhensky 'second-class' monastery, the church of Cyprian and Justine, the archbishop's house with the religious consistory, administrative buildings and the governor-general's house with all amenities linked to them, the artillery stores, the guardhouse, an old Supreme Commandant's house, the prison dungeons, and the old provisions and salt stores made of wood."
This description, similar to all other accounts, reflects the dynamics of the architectural development of the Kremlin in its capacity as the historical centre of Kazan. After the Pugachev uprising was suppressed, the first comprehensive town planning project in Kazan was created. The originator of the plan, the architect V. Kaftyrev, first began work on the scheme in 1774.
The project foresaw the construction in the Kremlin of a collection of administrative buildings within the framework of the complex urban development of the surrounding streets and squares of the city. As a result of skilful planning, the largest and most important buildings were left intact, and these became an integral part of the new city layout. The Kazan Kremlin remained at the heart of the scheme - the centre from which the wide Prolomnaya, Voskresenskaya (Kremlevskaya), Arskaya (K. Marx) and other streets lead out. The Bulak canal and Kaban lake formed the second axis of this urban development, parallel to which ran the other major streets of Kazan - Voznesenskaya (Ostrovsky), Moscovskaya (Kirov), Ekaterininskaya (Tukai) and so on.
Modern city ensemble, surrounding the Kremlin, as well as the inside architectural complex of the Kremlin itself were mainly accomplished by mid 1840s. Since then the principal features of the city development have been preserved in their historical invariability.<<back next>> Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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