Kazan Bogoroditsky Monastery

The Kazan Bogoroditsky Monastery is a men’s monastery on Bolshaya Krasnaya Street, rising not far from the eastern slope of the Kremlin hill; it is known above all as the site where the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God was found. At the heart of the monastery complex is the cathedral, recreated in the early 2020s to reproduce the appearance of the church destroyed during the Soviet era, where the city’s chief holy relic had been kept for centuries.

On July 8, 1579, a nine-year-old girl named Matrona found the icon at a spot revealed to her in a dream; an account of this event and of the first miracles was recorded by an eyewitness, the parish priest Yermolai, who would later become Patriarch Hermogenes. Contemporaries perceived the finding of the icon, just twenty-seven years after the capture of Kazan, as a sign of great significance, and that same year, by decree of Ivan IV, a convent for women was founded on the site. According to tradition, the monastery’s first nun was Matrona herself, who took monastic vows under the name Mavra.

In 1612 the militia of Minin and Pozharsky took the Kazan Icon with them on their campaign to Moscow, and after the victory the original was returned to the Kazan convent — from then on only a venerated copy was kept in the Moscow cathedral on Red Square. The influx of pilgrims made the monastery a renowned shrine of the entire Middle Volga region: under Catherine II’s church reform it was ranked first in the second class of monasteries, and in 1809 promoted to the first, highest class. The number of nuns and novices grew from just over a hundred in the early 19th century to five hundred by the time of the revolution.

The monastery’s main cathedral, where the icon was kept, was built in 1798–1808 to a classicist design by architect Ivan Starov — a building measuring 49 by 43 meters and 44 meters high, with five hemispherical domes. To its north the Church of St. Nicholas of Tula was built later (1810–1816), to its south the Exaltation of the Cross Cathedral (1882–1884), and two wings closed the ensemble into a giant semicircle. The complex also included earlier mid-17th-century structures — a tall bell tower and the small gate-church of St. Sophia.

After the Kazan Kremlin was closed in 1918, the diocese’s chief surviving relics — the relics of Saints Gury and Varsonofy — were moved here. Thirteen years later the parish was relocated to another city church, and the now-empty complex suffered badly: a tobacco factory was set up on the vacated territory, and the western section was built over with apartment blocks. The Church of St. Sophia was returned to believers in 1994, the Exaltation of the Cross Cathedral was restored by 2005, and from that time the monastery has been reviving, now as a men’s monastery.

The recreation of the main cathedral began by a decree of Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov in November 2015; Patriarch Kirill consecrated the site of the foundation in July 2016, and on July 21, 2021, five years later, he consecrated the restored church itself with the great rite of consecration, reproducing its historical appearance from a century earlier. Even earlier, in February 2020, the lower crypt church had opened. Restoration of the complex continues: from 2025 the Church of St. Nicholas of Tula and the monks’ cells are being restored, and work on the whole ensemble is planned to be completed by the end of 2026.