Ivan the Terrible Takes Kazan

October 2, 1552

After a two-month siege that ended with a mining charge beneath the walls, Ivan IV's army stormed the Tatar khanate of Kazan on the Volga. He ordered thousands put to the sword and founded a Russian archbishopric on the ruins. Moscow's expansion across Eurasia had begun in earnest. The Cathedral of Saint Basil, commissioned to celebrate the victory, became Russian architecture's most iconic symbol with its onion domes.