Red Square

• 1. Introduction

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  Red Square stands at the eastern wall of the Kremlin in the heart of Moscow, a space almost 73,000 square metres in size that has witnessed executions, coronations, riots, military triumphs, and rock concerts. Its name is not what it seems. The Russian word krasnaya, which gives the square its name, once meant beautiful, not red. Other cities across Russia still use the same phrase for their own main squares. Only in Moscow did the name stick in foreign translations as a color.

  For centuries this open ground between the Kremlin and the old trading district of Kitay-gorod served as the city's marketplace, its public stage, and its political arena. A moat once separated it from the fortress wall; it was paved over in 1812. The square that visitors walk today is the product of fires, invasions, demolitions, and reconstructions stretching back to the 15th century.

  What brought so many radically different functions to one rectangle of stone? What survives from each era, and what was nearly lost? The buildings ringing this square each carry a story that opens onto a larger chapter of Russian history.

• 2. A Name and Its Origins

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  Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich gave the square its modern boundaries officially, but the name Krasnaya had attached to only a small corner first. That corner was the area between Saint Basil's Cathedral, the Spasskaya Tower, and the herald's platform known as the Lobnoye Mesto. The rest of the square had been called Pozhar, meaning burnt-out place, because previous buildings on the site had burned down.

  Before Pozhar, the square was known by different names at different moments. It was called Veliky Torg, or Great Market, and simply Torg. Then it took the name Troitskaya, after a small Trinity Church that was destroyed in the fire of 1571 during the Tatar invasion. Each name recorded a trauma or a function the city was trying to hold onto.

  The renaming to Krasnaya did not happen all at once. The first written record using that name dates only to 1661-62. By the mid-17th century, a gilded double-headed eagle had been set on top of the Spasskaya Tower, and the square had begun to be called Krasivaya, meaning beautiful, reflecting how thoroughly its character had shifted from a burned ruin toward a ceremonial center of the Russian state.

• 3. The Moat and the Fortress Wall

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  Ivan the Great issued decrees in 1493 and 1495 ordering all buildings within 110 sazhens, or 234 metres, of the Kremlin wall to be demolished. The eastern side of the Kremlin triangle was judged the most vulnerable to attack because neither river provided natural protection there, unlike the other sides. Italian architects working on the fortifications persuaded Ivan that the cleared ground should become a field for shooting.

  From 1508 to 1516, the Italian architect Aloisio the New oversaw construction of a moat in front of the eastern wall. This Alevizov moat ran 541 metres long, 36 metres wide, and between 9.5 and 13 metres deep. It was lined with limestone and fenced on both sides with low brick walls four metres thick. Three gate towers pierced the wall on this side, known in the 17th century as the Konstantino-Eleninsky, Spassky, and Nikolsky gates, each named after the icon hung above it.

  Books were sold on the wooden and later stone bridges stretching across the moat from the Spassky Gate, the principal entrance used for royal ceremonies. The Tsar Cannon sat on a platform near the Lobnoye Mesto. When Napoleon's army retreated in 1812, the moat was filled in, and rows of trees were planted in its place, erasing one of the oldest defensive features of medieval Moscow.

• 4. The Market That Became a Stage

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  After a fire in 1547, Ivan the Terrible reorganized the wooden market stalls along the eastern side of the square into regulated market lines. The streets Ilyinka and Varvarka were divided into Upper, Middle, and Lower rows. These arrangements were replaced in 1595 with stone structures, making permanent what had been improvised.

  The Lobnoye Mesto had existed on the square since at least 1549, when the 19-year-old Ivan the Terrible gave a speech there. It was originally wooden; the stone version with iron grating dates from the late 1590s. Tsar decrees were read from it, patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church addressed crowds there, and executions took place nearby, though not on the platform itself. One of the most notorious was the execution of Stenka Razin in 1671.

  During Palm Sunday, a ceremony known as the procession on a donkey passed through the square, with the patriarch riding on a donkey accompanied by the tsar and crowds emerging from Saint Basil's Cathedral. The square thus layered commerce, punishment, and sacred ritual into a single space. In 1679-80 all wooden structures on the square were cleared away, consolidating its character as a formal ceremonial ground rather than an ad hoc marketplace.

• 5. The Buildings That Survived

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  Saint Basil's Cathedral was built between 1555 and 1561 on the orders of Ivan the Terrible to mark the victory over the Khanate of Kazan. Its architects included Ivan Barma and Postnik Yakovlev. The structure replaced a wooden Church of the Holy Trinity on the same site. Originally built of white stone, it was partly faced with red bricks during a 17th century renovation, giving it the color variation it still displays. Its nine towers and onion domes are deliberately asymmetrical, meaning the building presents a different silhouette from every angle and has no single main facade.

  The State Historical Museum was built between 1875 and 1883 to designs by Vladimir Osipovich Sherwood, a central figure in the Russian style of historicism. It opened ceremonially in May 1883 and now holds around 4.5 million exhibits across 16 specialist departments. Before the museum stood there, the site had housed Moscow's first pharmacy building from the early 18th century, which was later rebuilt and served briefly as the first campus of Moscow State University.

  The GUM department store opened on the 2nd of December 1893 after construction lasting from 1890. Its glass roof covering three interior passages was designed by the engineer Vladimir Schuchow using around 60,000 panes of glass. The architect Alexander Pomeranzew won the design competition. When GUM was given its current name in 1921, the abbreviation stood for State Department Store; today it stands for Main Universal Store. Since 2013, GUM has hosted Russia's largest Christmas fair in front of its building.

• 6. Revolution and the Soviet Square

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  In November 1917, around 250 soldiers who died during the October Revolution in Moscow were buried in two collective graves near the Senate Tower, creating what became the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. The practice of burying prominent revolutionaries there continued immediately. By the spring of 1919, Lenin's comrade Yakov Sverdlov had been interred in the Kremlin wall.

  Lenin's body was placed in a temporary mausoleum in January 1924, days after his death. The current mausoleum of granite and labradorite was built between 1929 and 1930 to designs by Alexey Shchusev, who had also designed both temporary predecessors. Stalin's body was laid out there in 1953 following his death; eight years later it was removed after the 20th Congress of the CPSU began the process of de-Stalinization, and he was buried at the Kremlin wall instead.

  In the 1930s the Kazan Cathedral and the Iverskaya Chapel with the Resurrection Gates were torn down to make room for military vehicles. Plans also existed to demolish Saint Basil's Cathedral and the State Historical Museum to enlarge the square further. A story, which has no documented evidence to support it, holds that when Lazar Kaganovich showed Stalin a model of the square with a removable cathedral, Stalin responded by putting it back and saying "Lazar! Put it back!" The cathedral survived. The Resurrection Gate was rebuilt in 1996 as a replica of the structure demolished in 1931, and the Kazan Cathedral was rebuilt by 1993.

• 7. Parades and Protests

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  Military parades on Red Square date from 1919. Two stand out above the rest in the Soviet record. The 1941 October Revolution Parade took place while German forces had encircled Moscow; troops left Red Square directly for the front lines. In 1945, the banners of defeated Nazi armies were thrown at the foot of Lenin's Mausoleum during the Victory Parade.

  On the 9th of May 2010, to mark the 65th anniversary of Germany's capitulation, the armed forces of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States marched in the Moscow Victory Day Parade for the first time in history. Individual parades have also been held for specific occasions, including the state funeral of Joseph Stalin on the 9th of March 1953 and the Day of Tankmen on the 8th of September 1946.

  Protest has had its moments on the square as well. In 1963, a group of African students demonstrated there in response to the alleged murder of a medical student named Edmund Assare-Addo. It was the first recorded political protest on Red Square since the late 1920s. On the 28th of May 1987, a West German pilot named Mathias Rust landed a Cessna F172P light aircraft beside Saint Basil's Cathedral, causing a major scandal in the Soviet Air Defense Forces. The KHL announced in December 2008 that it would hold its first outdoor all-star game on the square on the 10th of January the following year.

• 8. After the Soviet Union

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  Red Square was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1990, among the first sites in the USSR to receive that designation. The square continued to shift its uses after the Soviet collapse. Paul McCartney performed there, a concert noted as historic because The Beatles had been banned in the Soviet Union during their active years, with their records also prohibited from sale. Ringo Starr had performed in Russia earlier, at Moscow's Russia Hall in August 1998, making him the first former Beatle to play there.

  For the New Year celebrations of 2006, 2007, and 2008, a skating rink was installed on the square. Other performers who have taken the stage there include Linkin Park, The Prodigy, Shakira, Scorpions, Roger Waters, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

  The Monument to Minin and Pozharsky, which was moved in 1930 to its current position in front of Saint Basil's Cathedral to make room for military vehicles, had originally stood at the level of the main entrance to GUM since its unveiling in February 1818. The 20-ton bronze sculpture was financed entirely from public donations and designed by the sculptor Ivan Martos after nearly 15 years of planning. The Middle Trade Rows building, once used by the Russian Armed Forces, is currently being converted into a museum that will bring part of the Kremlin Armoury collection outside the Kremlin walls for the first time.