Bauman Street in Kazan

Bauman Street is one of the oldest streets in Kazan, the pride of its residents and a place of pilgrimage for tourists. It is located in the very center of the historical part of the city and stretches for almost 2 km from Millennium Square, spreading at the foot of the Kazan Kremlin, to Tukai Square, where it intersects with Pushkin Street. Here is concentrated a significant part of the historical and modern sights of Kazan: Orthodox monuments, beautiful mansions and former revenue houses of pre-revolutionary construction, interesting examples of street architecture.

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The townspeople have called Bauman Street the Arbat of Kazan for a reason. Here, just like on the iconic street of Moscow, life boils from morning till night: street musicians play soulful melodies, artists offer their services to idle strolling tourists, theatrical performances and informal performances take place. On both sides of the street, cafes, restaurants with terraces, shopping centers and stores where you can buy cute souvenirs crowd each other.

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Video: Bauman Street

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History of Bauman Street

Back in the era of the Kazan Khanate, the modern Bauman Street was a section of the Nogai Road, which led to the crossing of the Volga River, originating from the southern part of the city fortifications. During the storming of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible’s troops in 1552 in this fragment of the defensive fortifications was broken through an impressive gap, which during the restoration of the fortress did not begin to lay, and arranged as an entrance gate to the city. They were called “Prolomnye”. The street adjacent to them, which used to be a part of the Nogai road, also received the same name. Since then it has been called first Prolomnaya, then Bolshaya Prolomnaya for almost four centuries, and since 1930 it became known as Bauman Street – so in Soviet times it was named after a native of Kazan, a legendary fighter against the tsarist regime of Nikolai Bauman.

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This ancient corner of Kazan preserves the atmosphere of the pre-revolutionary merchant city, and its architectural appearance is mainly formed by buildings erected in the XVIII-XIX centuries. In this era, local bourgeois built their houses here, where on the first floors were located shops, and in the upper tiers were their quarters. The street was famous for its stores, taverns, tea houses, and drinking establishments, popular among craftsmen, clerks, and students. At the end of the twentieth century, rich merchants began to erect luxurious buildings here, where they opened profitable houses and hotels. In 1870 on Bolshaya Prolomnaya appeared a horse-drawn carriage – a city tramway with a harness of horses.

In the twentieth century, the conka was replaced by electric streetcars, trolleybuses, buses, and only in 1986 the ancient street became pedestrian. In the post-Soviet period, the city authorities repeatedly received proposals from the public to rename Bauman Street into the street of Chaliapin, no less famous native of Kazan. However, the fiery revolutionary has not yet ceded the pedestal to the world celebrity, although the memory of Fyodor Chaliapin is also honored in Kazan: several monuments to him have been erected in the historical part of the city, and the prestigious Chaliapin Palace Hotel is located on Bauman Street itself.

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