Walking excursion along Bauman Street

The old Bauman Street is the main pedestrian thoroughfare in Kazan. It is the city’s tourist quarter, complete with restaurants, fountains, street sculptures, small trades and souvenir shops. You can listen to street musicians, get yourself a portrait, have ice-cream in summer and a hot broth with local “echpochmak” pies in winter. Theatre and dance performances are common, and street musicians and artists are a permanent fixture. Day and night, the Bauman Street is full of people, sounds and colours. There are many monuments on this street. For example, a copy of the carriage of the Empress Catherine the great by which she travelled over the Tatar land in 1767. Or a monument to the Kazan Cat. Few people know that by the order of Catherine II 30 Kazan cats were transported to St. Petersburg to the Royal apartments. This happened after Catherine's visit to Kazan, when she noticed the absence of mice in the city. Thus, the cats helped to get rid of mice. In memory of the events of those days, two original attractions, cats-monuments appeared. One of them is now located on Bauman street, and the second was opened a few months before on the lake in the Raifa monastery.