Red Square, Saint Basil's Cathedral, GUM and the State Historical Museum

Extending 330 metres from northwest to southeast and measuring 70 metres across, Red Square (Krasnaya Ploshchad) covers almost 73,000 square metres between the eastern wall of the Moscow Kremlin and the historic trading quarter of Kitay-gorod. In old Russian usage, the adjective krasnaya meant "beautiful" before coming to mean "red", a name first given to the small area between Saint Basil's Cathedral, the Spasskaya Tower, and Lobnoye Mesto before it spread to the whole square. Together with the Kremlin, the square was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1990.

Approaching through Resurrection Gate and the State Historical Museum

The most dramatic pedestrian entry onto the cobblestones is from Manezhnaya Square through the twin-arched Resurrection Gate (Voskresenskiye Vorota), flanked by the small Iberian Chapel and topped by two red-brick tented spires. Directly west of the gate rises the State Historical Museum (GIM), founded in 1872 by historians Ivan Zabelin and Aleksey Uvarov on the site of Peter the Great's Principal Medicine Store. Built between 1875 and 1881 to a Russian Revival design by Vladimir Shervud, the museum's red-brick towers mirror the Kremlin towers opposite. Its chronological galleries hold millions of artefacts spanning prehistoric tribes across Eurasian steppes, medieval birch-bark manuscripts, and imperial Romanov treasures. Immediately northeast of the gate stands the coral-and-white Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, a reconstruction of the seventeenth-century shrine commemorating Moscow's liberation in 1612.

Saint Basil's Cathedral and Lobnoye Mesto

At the southern end of the square, where the terrain slopes down Vasilyevsky Descent toward the river, stands the Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed, officially titled the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat (Pokrovsky Sobor). Ordered by Ivan the Terrible and built from 1555 to 1561 to mark the military campaigns against the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, the structure clusters eight independent chapels around a ninth central tent-roofed sanctuary, with a tenth chapel added in 1588 over the grave of the local ascetic Saint Vasily. The patterned polychrome domes were completed in 1683.

Before the cathedral stands the bronze monument to Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky and the circular white-stone platform of Lobnoye Mesto, used in Muscovite times for proclaiming tsarist decrees and religious processions. Today the cathedral functions as a branch of the State Historical Museum; visitors climb steep sixteenth-century brick galleries inside the base to reach the upper iconostases and painted floral corridors. Check the official site for current seasonal entry hours before visiting.

GUM's Shukhov glass arcades and the Kremlin Wall

Running for 242 metres along the entire northeastern flank of Red Square, the GUM department store occupies the site of the old Upper Trading Rows. Constructed between 1890 and 1893 by architect Alexander Pomerantsev and structural engineer Vladimir Shukhov, the trapezoidal building combines medieval Russian facade motifs with three parallel multi-level galleries spanned by semicircular steel trusses and more than 20,000 panes of glass. Entry to the arcades is free, and the ground-floor central fountain and upper bridges are popular stops before continuing into Kitay-gorod and Zaryadye Park or dining on classic Russian dishes described in what to eat in Moscow.

Lenin's Mausoleum and Spasskaya Tower

Along the southwestern side of the square, beneath the Senate Tower of the Kremlin wall, stands the stepped red-and-black granite structure of Lenin's Mausoleum, designed by architect Alexey Shchusev after Vladimir Lenin's death in January 1924. Further south along the wall rises the Spasskaya (Saviour) Tower, whose chimes mark official Moscow time above the ceremonial gate leading toward the Kremlin.