Kremlyovskaya Street

Kremlyovskaya Street is the main historical thoroughfare of central Kazan, in the Vakhitovsky District. It runs along the crest of a hill for 1,139 meters from Ploshchad 1 Maya (1 May Square) to Universitetskaya Square, linking the ceremonial entrance to the Kremlin with the Kazan University complex and threading together nearly half of the old city’s architectural landmarks.

The street took shape as early as the 16th century, though most of its buildings date from the 19th century. Over the years it has changed names several times: it was called Spasskaya, after the Kremlin’s Spasskaya Tower; then, from the late 17th century, Voskresenskaya, after a church of the same name that was later demolished; under Soviet rule it bore the name of Chernyshevsky, and from 1958 — of Lenin. The street received its current name, referring directly to the Kremlin, only in 1996; an alternative proposed at the time, honoring the legendary Queen Syuyumbike, was not adopted. In 2011 the sidewalks along the entire length of the street were paved with cobblestones.

At the start of the street, on 1 May Square, several landmark structures converge: the Kremlin’s Spasskaya Tower, a monument to the poet Musa Jalil, the City Hall building — formerly the City Duma — and the National Museum of Tatarstan, housed in the former Gostiny Dvor (merchant arcade). Further along stands the building of the former Merchants’ Club and Military Assembly, dating to 1864, as well as an 1825 building that once housed the military governor’s residence and the district court and now serves as the reception office of the President of Russia in the republic.

A special chapter in the street’s history is formed by two trading arcades from the turn of the 19th–20th centuries — monuments of Kazan merchant Art Nouveau and Eclecticism. The Alexandrovsky Passage of 1880–1883 was built by architects Vasily Suslov and Nikolai Pozdeyev, while the Chernoyarovsky Passage dates to 1901; both served as showcases of pre-revolutionary Kazan’s commercial prosperity and have retained their imposing façades to this day.

Closer to the university end of the street stand the buildings of Kazan University — the main building of 1825, the physics faculty with a monument to physicist Yevgeny Zavoisky, and a public garden with a monument to mathematician Nikolai Lobachevsky. The Ushkova House, built in 1908 to a design by architect Karl Müfke, now houses the National Library of Tatarstan. The street concludes with a semicircular plaza in front of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, popularly nicknamed the “Skovorodka” (“Frying Pan”), where monuments to university rector Mikhail Nuzhin and to a young student named Vladimir Ulyanov stand.

Until 1948 a horse-drawn tram ran along Kremlyovskaya, later replaced by an electric tram, and in the 1970s–1990s by buses; today no public transport runs along the street, which is entirely given over to pedestrians. Nearby, in a side lane off the main axis, stands the Peter and Paul Cathedral — another landmark woven into the broader historical fabric of this part of the city.