Red Square — square
Image by joneybrain from Pixabay

Red Square

  • 2 min read
  • 55.754° N 37.620° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • The square covers about 73,000 square metres, some 330 metres long and roughly 70 metres wide.
  • The moat dug along the Kremlin wall in 1508–1516 was about 541 metres long, 36 metres wide and up to 13 metres deep.
  • The first recorded use of the Lobnoye Mesto platform dates to 1549, when the 19-year-old Ivan the Terrible addressed the people from it.
  • The glass roof of the GUM trading rows was assembled from around 60,000 panes, an engineering feat for the 1890s.
  • The State Historical Museum at the northern end holds around 4.5 million objects, making it one of Russia's largest museum collections.
  • The Minin and Pozharsky monument was paid for by public subscription in Nizhny Novgorod and moved from the centre of the square in 1936 to clear parade routes.
  • The clock faces of the Spasskaya Tower are more than six metres across, and the tower itself rises over 71 metres.
  • In 1937 the double-headed eagles on five Kremlin towers were replaced with glowing ruby-glass stars, two of them visible over the square.
  • A first wooden tomb for Lenin went up within two days of his death in January 1924; in October 1941 his body was evacuated to Tyumen in Siberia.
  • Mathias Rust was 18 when he landed his Cessna near the square on 28 May 1987, after flying unchallenged from Helsinki.

Why it is worth it

Red Square is a long rectangle — about 330 metres from end to end — laid along the eastern wall of the Moscow Kremlin, where the fortress had no river to protect it. That weakness is the square's origin: in the 1490s Ivan III ordered the ground outside the wall cleared of buildings to open a field of fire, and a deep moat was dug in front of the wall in the early sixteenth century. The cleared ground became Moscow's main market. The name, recorded from the 1660s, did not originally refer to the colour: the old Russian word krasnaya also meant "beautiful", and the space had earlier been known simply as Torg, the market, or Pozhar, the burnt place.

Almost every building around it is a landmark in its own right. At the southern end, Saint Basil's Cathedral — the Intercession on the Moat — was built in 1555–1561 for Ivan the Terrible to mark the capture of Kazan, a cluster of chapels crowned by nine onion domes whose bright colours came later, in the seventeenth century. Along the Kremlin wall stands Lenin's Mausoleum, Alexey Shchusev's stepped design, with the Spasskaya Tower and its tent roof and clock behind. Opposite, the upper trading rows of 1888–1893, now the GUM department store, and at the northern end the State Historical Museum, both in the late-nineteenth-century Russian Revival manner. The Kazan Cathedral and the Resurrection Gate were demolished in the 1930s to clear the way for parades and rebuilt after 1991.

The square has been a stage for Russian power for five centuries: the stone Lobnoye Mesto platform, from which decrees were read; Minin and Pozharsky's monument of 1818, commemorating the expulsion of the Poles in 1612; the November 1941 parade, when troops marched straight to the front; the 1945 Victory Parade. In 1987 a young West German pilot, Mathias Rust, landed a light aircraft beside it. Since 1990 the Kremlin and Red Square have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site together.

Streets such as Nikolskaya and Ilyinka, both dating back to the fourteenth century, lead off the square into the old district of Kitay-gorod, and the Moskva River is a short walk beyond Saint Basil's.

Getting there

Red Square is in the historic centre of Moscow, about 0.3 km from the city centre point. Sheremetyevo International Airport (SVO) is about 28 km away. Several central metro stations, including Ploshchad Revolyutsii, are within walking distance.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Moscow Oblast 13The Most Beautiful Places in Russia 73The Most Beautiful Squares Seen on Screen 5The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in Russia 6The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Squares 8The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments Seen on Screen 19The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Russia 20The Most Beautiful Squares 25The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Squares, Streets and Monuments 33The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments 173The Most Beautiful Film Locations 221The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557

From the encyclopaedia

Red Square is one of the oldest and largest squares in Moscow, Russia. It is located in Moscow's historic centre, along the eastern walls of the Kremlin. It is the city's most prominent landmark, with famous buildings such as Saint Basil's Cathedral, Lenin's Mausoleum, the State Historical Museum and the GUM department store. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. Red Square has been the scene of executions, demonstrations, riots, parades, and speeches. Almost 73,000 square metres, it lies directly east of the Kremlin and north of the Moskva River. A moat that separated the square from the Kremlin was paved over in 1812.

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55.75417, 37.62000per Wikidata