Where to go in Kazan to feel the city’s culture?
TCI 2020 will be held in Kazan — the city with a thousand-year history, hundreds of attractions and cultural diversity. We recommend that you start exploring Kazan from five beautiful sites.
It is the most ancient part of the city, a complex of archaeological, historic and architectural monuments. The site is in the list of the World Heritage Cultural Centers of UNESCO.
Kazan Kremlin is the only Kremlin, behind the walls of which a Muslim mosque Kul Sharif and an Orthodox Annunciation cathedral are located.
Second, we advise you to make a walk from the Kremlin along the Kremlin embankment — one of the favorite locations both among tourists and citizens. You may enjoy views on the Kazanka river, a wedding hall built in the form of a giant bowl, and a modern part of the city. If you get tired of walking, you may have lunch at a café on the embankment and find what famous “Tatar hospitality” tastes like.
The Old Tatar Quarter (“Staro-Tatarskaya Sloboda”)
Kazan was historically divided into different quarters (“slobodas”): Old Tatar, Goat (“Kozya”), Cloth (“Sukonnaya”), and Admiralty (“Admiralteyskaya”). We recommend that you come to the Old Tatar quarter, where Tatar merchants and craftsmen lived and worked 200 years ago. There you will find historic architectural monuments, cafés with national cuisine, and picturesque mosques. In a word, about national cuisine, by the way: locals so love the “chack-chack” delight, that in Old Tatar Quarter there is a whole museum devoted to this national delicacy.
Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral
Another place to see in Kazan is Saint Peter and Paul Cathedral. It is a valuable architectural monument and one of spiritual symbols of Kazan. The composition of the church and the bell-tower, made in the Russian baroque style and decorated with floral stucco moldings, was described in the writings by Alexander Humboldt, Alexandre Dumas, and Alexander Pushkin
Kazan is a tolerant city, where all religions and peoples live in peace: mosques are located close to chapels, and synagogues stand shoulder to shoulder with catholic churches. And if you want to see “the very most tolerant place in the world”, you should visit the Temple of all religions, or the Universal Church. This International cultural center of spiritual union combines elements of 16 religions: from Catholicism to Islam, from Buddhism to Maya people cult. Being inside, you not only study religions from all over the world, but have the possibility to get to another Universe: one of the temple’s halls is devoted to alien intelligence.
Today we told you about only five attractions, but Kazan has hundreds of places that will not leave you indifferent. Visiting Kazan means not only new acquaintances, contracts and profitable partnership, but also a journey to the world where tolerance, mutual respect and cultural wealth of different peoples rule.
Best regards, TCI 2020 team.
