Kremlin in the Second Half of the 16th — 18th Centuries.

After the events of 1552, came the period of slow restoration of the town. The main citizens of the former Tatar capital were now Russian settlers. The Kremlin and the trading quarter were used to house armed detachments and military units. Almost until the end of the 16th century Kazan was under martial law, but gradually the peaceful, economic functions of the town were restored, and it became the administrative centre of the region.
As before, the town consisted primarily of the Kremlin, fortified by strong walls and towers. It was the centre of contra! over the region. The Clerk's House, which was the chief administrative institution, was situated here. Close to it were three prisons. The ruins of the khan's palace were used as arsenal and military warehouse. The granaries were used to keep stocks of grain and provision for the garrison. According to the copyist's book of 1565-1568, the Kremlin had over 150 households. The houses were occupied by representatives of the top secular and clergy power; five voivodes, two clerks and nine penmen, an archbishop and other representatives of the clergy, commanders of riflemen units (sotniks .(commanders of hundred men) and desyatniks (commanders of ten men)), some categories of craftsmen and servicemen connected with the guarding and maintenance of the fortress.
Day and night, as we can see in the copyist's book, the armed guard overwatched the town, marching on the fortress wall. Nine sons of boysrs with fifty riflemen rode along the streets of Kazan several times a day. With the first toll of the bell as night fell, all the gates were closed tightly, and the keys to them were kept by chief voivode.
In 1555. the Moscow government has established the Kazan Archiepiscopate. The first Kazan archbishop, Gury, whose departure for Kazan was very solemn, was instructed by tsar and metropolitan to conduct an intensive missionary activity among Moslems, simultaneously advising him �to attract the Tatars with affection and bring them to taking baptism with love, but never with fear.� Having arrived in Kazan, the representatives of the clergy power started the construction of churches and monasteries, which took the place of Moslem mosques. Kazan was becoming a Russian town.
However, the topography of the Kremlin, according to the copyist's book of 1565-1568 was not changed drastically compared to the previous period. Some may (and do) think that the town planning traditions were rejected in the mid-16th century, which fact has totally changed the architecture of the Kazan fortress, and that the present-day ensemble of the Kremlin is the result of work done by a team of Pskov craftsmen Postnik Yakovlev and Ivan Shiryai, who built a new stone town in Kazan by order of Ivan the TerriPle dated 15 December 1555 by spring. Such statement is not true. There are more reasons to state that the Kremlin is a monument of the medieval town-planning art of Boulgars-Tatars, which was reconstructed at the Russian period with preservation of the most important parameters (location, function, bases of planning and composition) that take root in the earliest stages of the town's existence. It was not occasionally that Anthony Jenkmson, an English traveller, who visited the town on 29 May 1558, wrote: �Kazan is a fair town after the Russe or Tartar fashion, with a strong castle, situated upon a high hill.�
in the 17th century Kazan became the second largest city of Russia in terms of population and size. But it still preserved in it the traces of the Tatar period. Many objects in its territory are associated with thetr ofd names, and some of them still exist with minor changes.