Kazan Kremlin

Start at the gate. Underfoot, the paving is worn smooth, and the walls on either side are pale, almost chalky in the light. Look up, and two shapes fill the sky at once: the blue domes of a mosque and the gold-and-blue domes of an Orthodox cathedral. Few places in the world put them this close together. Here, on a hill above the river, they stand within a short walk of each other. Welcome to the Kazan Kremlin.

The word kremlin simply means a fortress inside a city. Many old Russian towns had one. This one sits on a high ridge where the Kazanka River meets the much wider Volga. That position explains almost everything about its story. Whoever held this hill controlled river traffic between the forests of the north and the steppes and trade routes to the south and east.

Long before the white stone walls you see today, there was a fortress here. In the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, this was the heart of the Khanate of Kazan, a Tatar state that grew out of the breakup of the Golden Horde. The Golden Horde was the western part of the Mongol empire. The khans ruled from this hill, and the city around it was a centre of trade, learning, and Islamic faith along the middle Volga.

Then came 1552. Ivan the Fourth, the Russian tsar remembered as Ivan the Terrible, laid siege to Kazan and took it by storm. The khanate came to an end. Much of the old fortress was destroyed, and the mosques inside it were pulled down. Soon afterwards, Russian builders began to reshape the hill. Many of them came from the city of Pskov, far to the west. They raised the walls and towers in white limestone, the stone that still gives the Kremlin its pale colour.

Take a moment with the walls themselves. Up close, the stone shows centuries of repair. Some blocks are rough and uneven, others are cleaner and newer. The towers along the circuit are different from one another. Some are square, some are round, some carry pointed roofs. The main entrance is the Spasskaya Tower, the Saviour Tower, the tall white tower with a spire that most visitors walk through first.

Inside, one of the oldest buildings is the Annunciation Cathedral. It was founded in the sixteenth century, soon after the conquest, and rebuilt and extended many times since. Look at its five domes, painted deep blue and scattered with golden stars. For the new rulers, this cathedral was a statement in stone. It said that the city now belonged to a different state and a different faith.

Now turn toward the mosque. This is the Qolşärif Mosque, with its turquoise domes and tall slender minarets. It looks old, but it is not. It was built at the end of the twentieth century and opened in 2005. Here is something many visitors miss. The mosque takes its name from Qolşärif, an imam and scholar. According to tradition, he died defending the city during the siege of 1552, alongside his students.

So the two great buildings on this hill tell two sides of the same event. One was built by the victors in the years after 1552. The other was raised more than four centuries later, in memory of the defeated. Today, Kazan is the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, and its people are mainly Tatar and Russian. The Kremlin is the place where the city shows how it wants to remember that past — side by side.

Walk on, and you will reach a red-brick tower that leans to one side. This is the Söyembikä Tower. Its exact building date is uncertain, though historians usually place it around the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. Its name is a puzzle. Söyembikä was a real queen of Kazan in the years before the conquest. Legend has it that she threw herself from the top of this tower rather than marry Ivan. It is a powerful story — but it is a legend. The tower was most likely built long after her lifetime.

Here is a second surprise. The lean is real, and it is clearly visible from the ground. Over the years, the tower tilted as the ground beneath it shifted. Engineers have worked to stop it from leaning further. Stand back a little, line the tower up against a straight wall or a lamppost, and the angle becomes easy to see.

Not far away is the large, pale yellow Governor's Palace, built in the nineteenth century. Today it serves as the residence of the President of Tatarstan. You cannot wander inside, but its long, orderly front shows the style of imperial Russia at that time. Around the courtyards you will also find old barracks, a cadet school, and other service buildings. Several of them now hold museums and exhibition halls.

In 2000, UNESCO added the Kazan Kremlin to its World Heritage List. UNESCO is the United Nations body that protects places of special cultural value. The listing recognised more than the beauty of the buildings. It recognised that this hill carries layers from the Golden Horde, the khanate, and the Russian state, all in one place. You are standing on top of those layers right now.

Before you leave, find a spot along the walls with a view out over the water. Look down at the river and the modern city spreading beyond it. Listen for the wind on the hill, the voices of other visitors, perhaps a bell or a call from the mosque. As you walk back through the white gate, notice the stone under your hand. It has watched this river for a very long time.