Chuvash town-planning traditions in the Volga region, the Black Sea region and in the Northern Caucasia are rooted in the extreme antiquity (VI-IX). Towns and fortresses of the Great Bulgaria and Suvar Tsardom in the Northern Caucasia (Varachan), the Volga Bulgaria (Bulgar, Suvar, Oshel, Bilyar, Juketau, Kremenchug) and Khazaria (Itil, Sarkel, Kerch and Tmutorakan) were the developed trade and craft centers where merchants and caravans from the East and Europe usually arrived. Partially intact buildings (black and white chambers, minarets, a church, bath-houses and tsar’s burial-vault in Bulgar) are the architectural models of the Bulgar period (XIII-XVI). Towns were surrounded with fortifications with towers (“a pocket”), a rampart and a ditch. There remained the descriptions of arab (ibn-Fadlan, al-Garnaty) and Jewish travelers (fra Muruano).

Chuvash fortresses digs (fortified settlements) such as Khulash and Tayaba that existed till XVI century are of great archeological interest. These are fortified feudal estates. Many are of the Bulgar-Chuvash period; some were built at the time of the Kazan Khanate (they belonged to the Tarkhan and the Murz). They were built from wood and stone and were surrounded with a ditch and a rampart (or a stone wall). A lot of less fortified settlements usually sided with them.

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