Red Square

Red Square lies in the centre of Moscow, along the eastern wall of the Kremlin. It grew from a market area cleared outside the Kremlin walls in the late 15th century and has been the main public square of the city ever since. Together with the Kremlin it was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1990.

The name does not come from the colour of the bricks or from communism. In old Russian the word krasnaya meant beautiful as well as red, and the name was first used for the area near St Basil's Cathedral before spreading to the whole square in the 17th century.

The south end is closed by St Basil's Cathedral, built in 1555 to 1561 for Ivan the Terrible to mark the capture of Kazan, with its cluster of brightly painted onion domes. At the north end stand the red brick State Historical Museum, opened in 1883, and the Resurrection Gate, rebuilt in the 1990s, next to the small Kazan Cathedral. The long facade of the GUM department store, completed in 1893, fills the east side.

Along the Kremlin wall stands Lenin's Mausoleum, the stepped granite tomb finished in 1930, where Lenin's embalmed body is displayed, with the graves of other Soviet leaders behind it. The square is used for military parades, including the Victory Day parade on 9 May, and for concerts and seasonal fairs.

Access to the square is free, though it may be closed for events and preparations. St Basil's, the Historical Museum and the Kremlin have their own tickets, and Lenin's Mausoleum opens only on certain mornings. Okhotny Ryad, Ploshchad Revolyutsii and Teatralnaya metro stations are a short walk away.

How big is Red Square? It runs about 330 metres from north to south and is about 70 metres wide. Over the Kremlin wall rises the Spasskaya Tower, about 71 metres tall, which took its present form in 1624 to 1625. Its clock, first designed by Christopher Galloway, has four dials each 6.12 metres across.

In front of St Basil's stands Lobnoye Mesto, a round platform of white stone first mentioned in 1549, when Ivan the Terrible spoke from it. The stone structure dates from the late 1590s and was rebuilt by Matvey Kazakov in 1786. Nearby is the bronze Monument to Minin and Pozharsky by Ivan Martos, unveiled in February 1818. It first stood in front of GUM and was moved beside the cathedral in 1930.

Two buildings on the square are modern copies. The Kazan Cathedral was demolished by the Soviet authorities in 1936 and rebuilt in 1993, and the Resurrection Gate, first built in 1680 and taken down in 1931, was reconstructed in 1996. The Kremlin Wall Necropolis behind Lenin's Mausoleum began in November 1917 with the burial of about 250 revolutionaries; it now holds twelve individual graves of Soviet leaders, 15 mass graves and more than 100 urns set into the wall, and the last burial took place in 1985.