Freedom Square

Freedom Square is one of Kazan’s two main squares, alongside Millennium Square, and serves as the administrative and cultural centre of the Vakhitovsky District. It is crossed by Pushkin Street and Teatralnaya Street, running north to south, and by Karl Marx Street and Bolshaya Krasnaya Street, running east to west. It is home to the republic’s government bodies, the conservatory, the philharmonic hall and Tatarstan’s main opera theatre.

The area began to be developed with noble estates in the 18th century, when under Catherine II the city received a regular development plan that defined the future street grid. In the 19th century a cultural centre of Kazan took shape here: a city theatre building was erected, the Assembly of the Nobility opened its doors, and the main post office appeared nearby. The square came to be known as Teatralnaya (Theatre) Square. Notably, the layout of buildings back then was the reverse of today’s: the old city theatre stood where the present square is, while where the opera house now stands there once spread the Derzhavin Garden, with a monument to the poet Gavriil Derzhavin erected in 1870 and lost in 1932, and a short-lived square with a monument to Kutuzov, put up in 1915.

The architectural focal point that has survived to this day is the former Assembly of the Nobility, built in 1845–1852 to a design by the architect Mikhail Korinfsky and later reworked by Ivan Yefimov; its elegant halls once hosted Kazan’s celebrated balls, and today the building houses the Kazan city hall. The second architectural dominant is the building of the Musa Jalil Tatar Academic State Opera and Ballet Theatre, erected in 1956 to a design by Nikolai Skvortsov and Ismagil Gainutdinov on the site of the former garden.

On 23 September 1924 Teatralnaya Square was renamed Freedom Square. In connection with the construction of the opera theatre, the area was landscaped anew, and on 7 November 1954 a monument to Vladimir Lenin with a speaker’s tribune, the work of sculptor Piniy Yatsyno and architect Alexander Gegello, was erected at its centre. During the Soviet decades May Day and October Revolution demonstrations and citywide parades were held here, and in the post-Soviet period the square has become a venue for rallies, festive events and commemorative parades, including a Victory Day march in 2012.

Today the square is lined by the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Tatarstan, the republic’s Ministry of Culture, the Salikh Saidashev State Grand Concert Hall, the Nazib Zhiganov Kazan Conservatory and a building of the KNRTU-KAI technical university. Combining the functions of the city’s administrative, musical and theatrical centre, Freedom Square remains one of Kazan’s main public spaces, still hosting civic celebrations and commemorative ceremonies.