Red Square

The story

The square began as a market outside the Kremlin wall in the late 1400s, after a fire cleared the wooden houses. People called it the Fire, then the Trading Square. In the 1600s it took the name Krasnaya, which in old Russian meant beautiful. Later the word came to mean red.

It is about 330 metres long and 70 wide. On one side runs the Kremlin wall with Lenin's tomb in front of it. Opposite is GUM, the old trading rows. At the north end stands the State Historical Museum, at the south end St Basil's Cathedral.

What is here

The square is free and open at all hours, except when it is closed for events. St Basil's Cathedral and the State Historical Museum each have a ticket. Lenin's Mausoleum is free on its opening days. GUM is a shop.

If you have one minute

In the middle of the square, facing St Basil's

Ivan IV, the Terrible, built the cathedral in 1555–1561 to give thanks for taking Kazan from the Tatars. It is nine churches on one base: eight round a tall central tent, each crowned with its own onion dome. The bright colours came later, in the 1600s.

Its proper name is the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat. Muscovites call it after Basil, a holy fool who walked the streets naked and rebuked the tsar. He is buried in a chapel added to it.

Turn to the wall. The low red and black granite block is Lenin's tomb, built in 1930 to replace a wooden one. His embalmed body has lain there since 1924.

Things people often get wrong

"It is called Red Square because of communism." The name is older than the Soviet Union by three hundred years.

"St Basil's is inside the Kremlin." It stands outside the wall, at the end of the square. It is a museum, part of the State Historical Museum, with its own ticket.

"The square is always open." It is closed at times for parades, concerts and state events, and for days of rehearsals before 9 May.

People who stood here

We searched Russian, Chinese and English sources for this list.

• Ivan IV ("the Terrible", first tsar of Russia)He built St Basil's and spoke to his people from the stone platform in front of it, the Lobnoye Mesto.
• Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry PozharskyA butcher and a prince who raised the army that drove the Poles out of the Kremlin in 1612. Their bronze statue of 1818 was the first monument in Moscow.
• Yuri Gagarin (first man in space)On 14 April 1961, two days after his flight, he was cheered by crowds on the square. His ashes lie in the Kremlin wall behind the mausoleum.
• Mao ZedongOn 7 November 1957 he watched the parade for the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution from the top of the mausoleum, with the Soviet leaders.
• Mathias Rust (West German pilot)On 28 May 1987, aged nineteen, he flew a small plane from Finland through Soviet air defences and landed by St Basil's. Several Soviet generals lost their posts.
• Paul McCartney (British musician, the Beatles)On 24 May 2003 he played to a crowd on the square. Beatles records had been forbidden in the Soviet Union in his youth.
• Xi JinpingHe attended the Victory Day parades of 2015 and 2025 on the square, when soldiers of the Chinese People's Liberation Army marched in them.

Go deeper: six stops round the square

Walk round the square anticlockwise, starting from the Resurrection Gate at the north end.

1. The Resurrection Gate and kilometre zero

The twin-towered gate was pulled down in 1931 so that tanks could drive through for parades, and rebuilt in 1995. In the pavement before it is a bronze plaque, kilometre zero, from which Russian road distances are measured. People stand on it and throw a coin over their shoulder.

2. The Historical Museum and the Kazan Cathedral

The red brick museum of 1883 copies the towers of the Kremlin. Beside it the little Kazan Cathedral is also a copy: the church of 1636 was demolished in 1936 and rebuilt in 1993 from drawings an architect had made before it fell.

3. GUM

The Upper Trading Rows opened in 1893: three long arcades under glass roofs designed by the engineer Vladimir Shukhov. In Soviet times it was the State Universal Store, with long queues and few goods. Today it is luxury shops, and an ice cream eaten walking along the gallery is a Moscow ritual.

4. Minin and Pozharsky, and St Basil's

The two heroes of 1612 stand in front of the cathedral. The relief on the base shows the people of Nizhny Novgorod giving their money for the army.

Inside St Basil's the nine churches are linked by narrow painted passages. Each chapel is tall and small, like a well of light. Climb to the gallery and you walk between the drums of the domes.

5. The Kremlin wall, the mausoleum and the necropolis

Behind the mausoleum, along the wall, are the graves of Soviet leaders, Stalin among them, and urns set into the wall: Gagarin, the writer Maxim Gorky, the American journalist John Reed. Stalin lay in the mausoleum beside Lenin from 1953 until 1961, when he was moved out at night.

On 7 November 1941 soldiers marched past the mausoleum and on to the front, forty kilometres away. On 24 June 1945 soldiers threw two hundred German banners at its foot.

6. The Spasskaya Tower, and the same years in China

The clock on the Saviour Tower has chimed the hour since the 1850s. On New Year's Eve all Russia waits for it on television. The ruby star on top was put up in 1937, replacing a double-headed eagle.

St Basil's was finished in 1561, in the Jiajing years of the Ming (1521–1567). In 1689 Russia and the Qing signed their first treaty at Nerchinsk. Three centuries later, on 9 May 2015, Chinese soldiers marched across this square for the first time.