Yelabuga (Devil's) Fortified Site

On the high bluff where the Toyma meets the Kama stand the remains of a fortified settlement: first a clan refuge of tribes of the second half of the first millennium, then a stone citadel of the Golden Horde period. The square fortress of four hundred square metres with four towers was, most likely, a fortress-mosque; the walls between the corner towers ran twenty-one metres. Only the southern — the largest — tower has survived: a cylinder seven point one metres tall, its walls two metres thick at the base and seventy centimetres at the top. By 1825 the locals had dismantled everything else to its foundations; in 1844 the tower itself collapsed. In 1867 the Yelabuga merchant Ivan Shishkin — father of the future painter — restored it on the old foundation: the four rectangular windows and the round top belong to that reconstruction. The site was called 'Devil's' not without reason: the tower long stirred the imagination — tales of evil spirits, underground passages and buried treasure. Today it is Yelabuga's signature sight and the town's best viewpoint: from the bluff one sees the Toyma joining the Kama, and around the tower lies a meadow park with trails.