Old photos · Russia

Old photos of Kazan

The kremlin runs through all of it, from the 1860s to the 1990s — photographed from the streets below and, from the 1890s, from the top of the Söyembikä Tower, looking out over the city.

12,504 photographs within 8 km of the centre · counted 12 October 2026

Time Portal's archive holds about 13,000 photographs of Kazan, taken between 1856 and 2000, each pinned to the spot where the photographer stood. 61% of them date from 1955 or later and are free to browse at map.timeportal.app with no account; the older ones open with Pro. The oldest, dated 1856 in the archive, shows the Krestovnikov stearin works in its first year — the photograph the archive describes as the oldest taken in Kazan.

Photographs: 13,000
Oldest: 1856
Busiest decade: 1970s
Free, 1955 on: 61%

Kazan's rooftops and churches running to the horizon beyond the domes of the Annunciation Cathedral in the kremlin, seen from the Söyembikä Tower in 1900 — The view south-east from the Söyembikä Tower, 1900

How many photographs, decade by decade

The busiest decades for Kazan are the 1970s and the 1980s — 1,997 and 1,916 photographs. 770 were taken before 1900. Everything from 1955 onward is free to open on the map; the older photographs are part of Pro.

Photographs of Kazan in the Time Portal archive, within 8 km of the centre, by the year each was taken. Counted 12 October 2026.
Decade	Relative size	Photographs
before 1860		6
1860s		25
1870s		150
1880s		157
1890s		432
1900s		924
1910s		479
1920s		549
1930s		997
1940s		435
1950s		1,361
1960s		1,692
1970s		1,997
1980s		1,916
1990s		1,384

Where the photographs were taken

Counted in a small square around each place — about 250 metres each way — so a number is every photograph taken there, of the place itself or of the street beside it. Each place opens the map on that spot.

Place	Photos	Oldest
The Kremlin	793	1867–1868
Bauman Street	647	1894
Tukay Square	577	1892
Kazan University	633	1867–1869
Freedom Square	586	1870
The Old Tatar Quarter	190	1879

What changed

Kazan's centre was rebuilt slowly rather than all at once. The kremlin came through the Soviet years with its white walls, the Annunciation Cathedral and the leaning Söyembikä Tower, though several of its churches did not; the Qolşärif Mosque inside it is new, opened in 2005.

Bauman Street, the pedestrian street from the kremlin down to Tukay Square, was Bolshaya Prolomnaya until 1930. Beside Lake Kaban, the Old Tatar Quarter grew up around the Marjani Mosque, finished in 1770 — the first stone mosque the city was allowed to build after its conquest in 1552.

Horse cabs waiting beside the domed brick Resurrection Cathedral on Voskresenskaya Street in Kazan in 1890 — The Resurrection Cathedral on Voskresenskaya Street, 1890 — pulled down in the 1930s

An open-topped bus at a corner of Bauman Street in Kazan in 1929, as people cross the cobbles and a tram comes up the street — A bus on Bauman Street, 1929

Questions about old photos of Kazan

Where can I see old photos of Kazan on a map?

On Time Portal: about 13,000 photographs of Kazan, each pinned where it was taken, most with the direction the camera faced. The map is free in any browser at map.timeportal.app — photographs from 1955 on need no account — and there is an app for iPhone and iPad.

What is the oldest photograph of Kazan in the archive?

The oldest precisely dated photograph, from 1856, shows the Krestovnikov stearin works in its first year — the photograph the archive describes as the oldest taken in Kazan. 770 of the Kazan photographs were taken before 1900.

Which years of Kazan are best covered?

The 1970s, with 1,997 photographs, and the 1980s, with 1,916. 61% of the Kazan photographs date from 1955 or later.

Open Kazan on the map

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The counts on this page are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 — credit Time Portal and link here. The photographs are not ours to license: they belong to their photographers and the archives that keep them.