The Annunciation Cathedral was founded by Toann the Terrible immediately after taking Kazan as a wooden church; Ten years later, a stone cathedral was built on this site, and according to the then account for the construction, the workmen spent 1148 rubles 421/> kopecks (from 6 to 8 money per day for each), and iron was purchased for 100 rubles. The temple was built by Pskov masons with Ivan PGiry at the head, and Saint Gury supervised the construction. After several fires, the cathedral was repaired and enlarged with new buildings, but its original architecture remained the same; in Noah will rush in imitation of the Moscow Assumption Cathedral. Built in late times, the bell tower is a combination of the ancient Russian style with the Tatar style: as if with the rise
*) In the Kremlin there is a little-known Pyatnitskaya Gate, opposite the Pyatnitskaya Church, located inside the Kremlin.
When constructing the lower floors, the builder imitated the architecture of the neighboring Sumbekin Tower, while on the upper floors he copied the bell tower of Ivan the Great.
In the Annunciation Cathedral, the relics of Archbishop Gurl now rest, transferred here from the Transfiguration Monastery in 1650, that is, 50 years after they were discovered. The sacristy of the cathedral is very rich: it contains
There are many precious and ancient things that belonged to the saint.
At the edge of the Kremlin, behind the square, you notice the beautiful palace building, lined with trees and with a house church. In the past, this place was the courtyard of the Kazan khans; Now the governor lives in it, but the church has been converted from a mosque.
An object worthy of curiosity for those visiting Kazan is the Sumbek Tower, or correctly Suyunbeki; This balina is nothing more than the minaret of the main mosque, which served as the burial mound of the Kazan khans. During the capture of Kazan, the mosque was destroyed by the Russians, but the tower fell and has been preserved to this day as the only monument to ancient Tatar Kazan. It is very possible that the upper floors of the tower, damaged during the siege of the city by the Russians, were subsequently repaired, which is why traces of later architecture are erased from them; but in any case, the three lower floors are undoubtedly of ancient construction.
The entire tower is distinguished by its elegant, original style and reaches a height of 85 fathoms. During the reign of Anna Toannovna, the spire of the tower was decorated with the state coat of arms, above which on the thin and long tip there is a the wife had a brightly gilded ball. This ball served for a long time as the subject of a very original theft of the Kazan Tatars: they claimed that inside the ball they kept extremely important papers for the Tatars, in which all the Tatar rights and prerogatives were indicated under the royal seal. It was stolen for three quarters of the century and finally in 1881 the balloon was removed and solemnly inspected in the presence of the Tatars; Of course, it turned out to be empty, and the unforgivable theft itself collapsed.
The lower floors of the tower are made of wild stone and only recently lined with brick, while the upper floors are made of brickwork. The tower received its name from the last Kazan queen Suyunbeki, whose name became legendary. Popular rumor presents a poetic image of this queen, the appearance of a charming beauty who endured a lot of grief and suffering in life, and in prison had the misfortune of seeing the fall of her fatherland.
Suyunbeki's life was indeed not bright. At the age of thirteen, she was married to the fifteen-year-old Kazan king Enaleus. The boy king, much more occupied with the amusements of his age than with questions about the government of the state, of course, could not cope with the then serious situation of his fatherland with the proper firmness and courage. As a result, discontent arose, a conspiracy was formed and Enaleus was killed. To meet this, the Kazan people again called upon their former king Saea-Girey, who just three years before had been driven out of his fatherland by them. Saea-Girey, enchanted by the beauty of Suyunbeki, despite the tears of this young widow, forced her to become his wife with four wives he already had. From the very first days of her new marriage, Suyunbeka, who became the main and beloved wife of Saea-Girey, felt a completely natural aversion to him, if we take into account the personality of Saea-Girey, who spent his days in idleness and cruelty, and his nights in drunkenness and ugly ordeals. The moral suffering experienced by the young woman who saw no way out of her unhappy situation is innumerable. She shed many tears, not finding support even in her own father, who forced her to become the wife of Saea-Girey.