Syuyumbike Tower

The Syuyumbike Tower is a gate watchtower of the Kazan Kremlin and, arguably, the city’s most recognisable architectural symbol. It ranks among the world’s ‘leaning’ towers: its spire deviates from the vertical by about two metres, and the structure’s total height reaches 58 metres.

The tower’s origin has been disputed for more than two centuries, with dating ranging from the 15th to the early 18th century — the archives of the Kazan Khanate and of the Kazan Palace Office have not survived. The earliest written mention comes from Andrei Kurbsky, a participant in the capture of Kazan in 1552, who described climbing with his men to the second tier of the ‘great tower’ during the assault. The structure first appears on a city map only in 1717–1718, while the Dutch traveller Cornelis de Bruyn had already sketched its silhouette in 1703. According to one theory, the watchtower was built under Peter the Great to observe the movements of rebelling Bashkirs, who had approached to within thirty kilometres of Kazan, possibly using fragments of an earlier minaret that had stood on the same spot.

The brick structure, set on oak piles, consists of seven diminishing tiers: three square (‘chetverik’) tiers and four octagonal (‘vosmerik’) tiers, crowned by a ribbed tented spire. The lower tier contains a through passage, which once served as the gate to the khan’s, and later the governor’s, courtyard. The tower’s faces are decorated with pilaster strips and thin brick mouldings, and the pylons of the west and east façades of the lower tier carry attached Corinthian columns. The weakness of the foundation — laid no deeper than one and a half metres — is considered the likely cause of the lean, already noted in historical sources.

The fate of the tower’s finial reflects the city’s turbulent history: in 1730 a double-headed eagle was mounted on the spire, and according to Kazan Tatar tradition, the sphere beneath it supposedly held documents relating to Tatar history. In February 1918, by decree of the Soviet government, the tower, together with the Orenburg caravanserai, was handed over to the Muslim population as a monument of national history, and the eagle was replaced with a silver crescent. In the 1930s, at the height of the anti-religious campaign, the crescent was removed, and only in 1993, responding to requests from the Tatar public, was a now gilded crescent raised in its place — since then the tower has been used as a minaret during the memorial prayer for the victims of the fall of Kazan.

From the upper tier, on a clear day, a panorama opens over the Kazanka and the Volga extending several dozen kilometres. The tower’s lean continues to be tracked using modern methods: since the early 2020s the republic’s heritage protection committee has organised monthly monitoring by laser scanning, to catch any further deviation in time.

Its disputed origin has not stopped the Syuyumbike Tower from becoming an unofficial emblem of Kazan alongside the Kremlin’s Spasskaya Tower — its silhouette is recognised even by those who have never visited Tatarstan.