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Red Square
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Have a virtual wander with me around the very heart of Moscow and see the city's most famous landmarks! This is Red Square! The one you've heard so much about - here it is! It's the oldest square in Moscow, has enjoyed a fascinating and tumultuous history and boasts some of the city's most photographed buildings.
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 | | Red Square - a brief history of Moscow's oldest and most famous square and the home of the city's best known landmarks - the Kremlin, St. Basil's Cathedral and Lenin's Mausoleum. |
 | | St. Basil's Cathedral - built in the 16th century on Red Square by Ivan the Terrible to commemorate his successful military campaign against the Tartar Mongols in the besieged city of Kazan, its mass of brightly painted onion domes and turrets is now one of Moscow's best-known landmarks. |
 | | Kazan Cathedral - newly constructed replica of the 17th century church built in honor of the Kazanskaya Icon to commemorate Tsar Mikhail Romanov's victory over the Poles and Lithuanians in 1612, and later destroyed by the Bolsheviks. |
 | | GUM Department Store - elegant turn-of-the century shopping mall, combining elements of Russian medieval ecclesiastical architecture and an elegant steel framework and glass roof, and today filled with elegant boutiques and designer stores aimed at Moscow's nouveau riches. |
 | | Lobnoye Mesto - circular stone platform built on Red Square in the early 16th century and used primarily as a platform from which the Tsar's edicts were read out, special church sermons were given and the sentences of convicted criminals were aired. |
 | | The Resurrection Gate - recently built replica of the 16th century gate constructed as a chapel to house the legendary miracle-working Icon of the Mother of God of Iver, which was torn down on Stalin's orders to ease tank access to parades on Red Square. |
 | | State Historical Museum - museum charting the development of Russian civilization from Kievan Rus to the present day, housed in a magnificent dark redbrick building covered in ornate turrets and pinnacles, which was built in the 1870s and officially opened by Tsar Alexander III. |
 | | Lenin's Mausoleum - still the resting place of the embalmed body of the founder of Soviet Communism some 76 years after his death, housed in a futuristic granite-cube building designed by Shchusev that stands on Red Square next to the Kremlin walls. |
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