Visit Kazan

The world's largest car-free old city.

Ancient Islamic city of 82 mosques, where hyenas are fed by hand at night.

The first Ottoman capital under Mount Uludag: the Green Mosque, the silk bazaar and Iskender kebab.

The mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, Timur's unfinished masterpiece and Kazakhstan's holiest site.

The fourth holiest city of Islam: the Great Mosque of 670 and the carpet souks.

Russia's oldest city, the 11th-century St Sophia and the birch-bark letters of a medieval republic.

Onion domes over meadows: five monasteries and thirty churches in a town with no buildings taller than two storeys.

Faded Ottoman-Italian Red Sea port.