The Leaning Tower of Syuyumbike in Kazan

What to Expect and Is It Worth Visiting

The Leaning Tower of Syuyumbike is one of the iconic architectural monuments. sights of Kazan. Its image can be seen on souvenirs, postcards, booklets, and, of course, with your own eyes on the territory of Kazan Kremlin. Its peculiarity is that it is "falling", i.e. slightly tilted like the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, and this is clearly visible to the naked eye. Its height is 58 meters. Tourists can explore the tower, take pictures on its background, but tourists can not get inside. The tower was closed to the public several years ago, and as they say, the reason for the closure was the jump from it of a young girl.

Initially, it was a watchtower, built presumably during the Kazan Khanate, i.e. around the 16th century, but even the century of construction is not known for certain. But for tourists, the legends associated with the tower and the origin of its name, which guides tell during a sightseeing tour of the Kremlin, are much more interesting.

One of the legends says that the tower was built after the capture of Kazan on the orders of Ivan the terrible in just 7 days as a gift to the beautiful queen Syuyumbika as a wedding gift. But the Queen did not want to marry the king, and threw herself from the top of the tower. According to another version, he built a tower specifically for her to drop from there. There are other legends, one way or another connected with the death of the Queen. In fact, none of them is true, because in reality queen Syuyumbike was much older than Ivan the terrible and could not be interesting to him. A year and a half after the capture of Kazan, she was forcibly married to Khan Shah Ali.

And we advise you to see interesting options for individual and group excursions with reviews on these proven sites:

• 📷 search for excursions in Kazan on Sputnik8.com
• 📷 search for excursions in Kazan on Tripster.ru
• 📷 excursions in Kazan from the tour operator TEZ Tour