The Senate Building

Opposite the Arsenal, on the edge of Senate Square, stands the imposing Neoclassical Senate building, built between 1776 and 1788 by the renowned Moscow architect Matvei Kazakov. The building was commissioned by Empress Catherine the Great to house meetings of the Moscow branch of the Senate, an advisory body that she had set up in 1711, and has been the official residence of the Russian President since 1991. After its construction, the commandant of the Kremlin doubted the stability of the building's large green dome, which is clearly visible from Red Square, and the architect was forced to climb up onto the cupola and stay there for more than an hour before he was convinced of its integrity. The cupola sits above the building's impressive grand hall, which was used formerly for meetings of the USSR Council of Ministers and the awarding of Lenin Prizes.

The building also used to contain the former quarters of Lenin and Stalin's study, under which a secret passage was discovered that may have enabled the Director of the Secret Police, Beria, to overhear the dictator's conversations. The Senate Building looks onto Senate Square, where in February 1905 the terrorist Ivan Kalyaev, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, threw a bomb at the carriage in which the uncle of Tsar Nicholas II, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, was traveling.