Zilantov Monastery

The Zilantov Convent of the Dormition stands on Zilantova Hill near the confluence of the Kazanka and Volga rivers, downstream from the Kazan Kremlin. Founded by Ivan the Terrible shortly after the capture of the city, the convent today operates as a women’s monastery and preserves the memory of the first burials of Russian soldiers on Kazan soil.

The monastery was founded on 15 October 1552, a few days after the fall of the khanate’s capital, on the site where the tsar’s tent and a field church had stood during the siege, and where the warriors who died beneath the city walls were buried. This same site is associated with the veneration of one of the first Orthodox martyrs of these lands — John of Kazan. The convent received the name “Zilantov” after the hill on which, according to Tatar legend, dwelt the winged serpent Zilant, whose image later entered the coat of arms of Kazan.

The original buildings stood in a lowland and suffered from the floods of the Kazanka; in 1559 a particularly severe flood washed away the walls, after which the monastery was moved to the top of the hill and enclosed with a stone wall. The main ensemble took shape in the 17th century, when the Dormition Cathedral (1625) and the Church of Metropolitan Alexis (1720) were built, along with monastic cells and outbuildings. The monastery grounds also include a separate memorial church dedicated to the icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands, built in 1823 directly above the mass grave of soldiers who fell during the capture of Kazan.

For a short time, between 1732 and 1740, a theological school operated here — the future Kazan Seminary, later succeeded by a school for training missionaries; over time both institutions acquired their own buildings and left the monastery. From 1829 to 1852 the monastery was headed by Archimandrite Gabriel, who went down in history as the first scholar of Russian philosophical thought. A tragic chapter came in September 1918, when almost all of the monastery’s monks, led by Archimandrite Sergius, were executed by firing squad; the surviving community continued to exist until 1928, and over the following Soviet decades the ensemble on the hill was almost completely destroyed, including the monastery cemetery with the graves of prominent citizens of Kazan.

The revival began in August 1998, when the former men’s monastery was re-established as a convent for women. Of the buildings from earlier centuries, only the Church of All Saints (1681), substantially rebuilt in the 1890s, and the early-19th-century abbot’s residence have survived — the other buildings date from more recent times. Among the new structures, the Trinity Cathedral stands out; consecrated in 2006, it reproduces almost without deviation the appearance of the cathedral of the same name at the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius near Moscow.

Nearly five centuries after its founding, the Zilantov Monastery remains an active convent and one of the few monuments in Kazan directly linked to the events of the capture of the city in 1552.