Red Square, Moscow: What It Is and When You Can Go Back

Moscow is currently inaccessible to most Western visitors. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the major Western governments advise against all travel to Russia. Sanctions have disrupted card payments, flight connections have been severed, and the practical infrastructure for foreign tourism has largely collapsed. This article documents Red Square and its surroundings as they exist historically and as they will exist when travel to Moscow becomes possible again.

The name “Red Square” has nothing to do with communism. The Russian word “krasnaya” historically meant both “red” and “beautiful,” and the square was called Beautiful Square long before the Soviet period. Sources from the 17th century use the current name, when the square served as Moscow’s main marketplace and the site of public executions. The 20th century added the Soviet associations; the name predates them by three centuries.

St Basil’s Cathedral

Ivan the Terrible ordered the Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat built between 1555 and 1561 to mark the capture of Kazan from the Tatar Khanate. The commission was specific: a cathedral whose exterior celebrated a military victory, designed by the architect Postnik Yakovlev. The story that Ivan blinded Yakovlev afterward to prevent him from surpassing the work is almost certainly false; Yakovlev appears in verified records years later, working on other projects in other cities.

The cathedral is nine separate chapels, each topped with an onion dome in a different design. The multicoloured painted pattern on the domes dates to the 17th century; the original exterior was simpler. The interior is the architectural opposite of the exterior: low-ceilinged, labyrinthine, dark, intimate. The corridors between the nine chapels are barely wide enough for two people. The 16th-century frescoes covering the walls require eyes adjusted to the dimness to appreciate.

The Kremlin

The Kremlin is a triangular walled fortress immediately west of the square, enclosing the seat of Russian governmental power alongside three medieval cathedrals and the Armoury Museum. The three cathedrals, all from the 15th century, contain the tombs of Russian tsars and the relics of Orthodox saints; the Cathedral of the Assumption was the coronation church for every Russian ruler from Ivan the Terrible to the last tsar.

The Armoury Museum holds what is essentially the treasury of Russian statehood: Ivan the Terrible’s throne, Monomakh’s Cap (the coronation crown used from the 14th century through Mikhail Romanov), a complete collection of Fabergé imperial Easter eggs, and the ceremonial armour and carriages of the tsarist period. Entry requires a separate timed ticket from general Kremlin access; it is worth planning for.

Lenin’s Mausoleum at the base of the Kremlin wall holds the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin, on display since 1924. The mausoleum is open on certain mornings with typically short queues by Moscow standards. Whether the visit is primarily interesting as history or primarily interesting as the Soviet state’s approach to immortality is a question visitors resolve differently.

GUM

The GUM department store along the square’s eastern side is a covered arcade built in 1893 with a glass barrel-vaulted roof over three levels of shops. Under Soviet rule it was the main state retail outlet, known for queues and chronically empty shelves. Today it operates as a luxury retail space. The architecture is genuinely impressive from the inside: cast iron, glass, the play of natural light through the roof. The famous Soviet-era ice cream kiosk in the main arcade, serving Plombir in a waffle cone, has been operating in one form or another since the Khrushchev era.

What Else Moscow Contains

For the record, when travel normalises: the Tretyakov Gallery holds the most significant collection of Russian art from medieval icons through the 20th-century avant-garde, including Malevich, Kandinsky, Larionov, and Goncharova. The Bolshoi Theatre on Teatralnaya Square is one of the world’s major opera and ballet companies. The Moscow Metro’s station architecture, particularly Komsomolskaya, Kievskaya, and Mayakovskaya, is the most extraordinary public transport infrastructure in the world; it was designed to function as a showcase of Soviet achievement and demonstrates that a metro system can be deliberately, specifically beautiful. It is worth travelling to see specifically.