The Lobnoye Mesto

The Lobnoye mesto served as a platform to announce the tsar's orders and sentences to criminals.

To the left of the St. Basil's Cathedral (5), there is the Lobnoye mesto, the place of executions - a high white-stone platform fenced with a cast-iron wall. It emerged here in the first half of the 16th century and served as a platform to announce the tsar's orders and sentences for criminals. In Orthodox Moscow this place was a symbol of the Calvary in Jerusalem where Jesus Christ was crucified. In Hebrew, "Calvary" means "head", or "forehead": the Church legend says that Adam was buried on the Calvary, and the blood of crucified Jesus washed his scull and cleansed the original sin of man (Russian word "Lobnoye" meaning "place of execution" which stems from "lob" meaning "forehead").

Holy relics were put on the Lobnoye mesto for public celebration. Here Ivan the Terrible spoke to his people in 1547, and boyars Boris Godunov and Vasiliy Shuysky were proclaimed tsars. Contrary to widespread belief, it was never a literal place of executions. Scaffolds were usually put near it, and more often on the Vasilyevsky slope behind the St. Basil's Cathedral.

At the Kremlin wall, you can see the Mausoleum (2) built upon the design of A.Shchusev in January, 1924 to keep the body of Lenin in. It was initially made of wood. Lenin's wife, N.Krupskaya, as well as his brother and sister objected to such a blasphemous burial. They wanted to bury him humanely in the ground but the closest political circle surrounding the leader of the October revolution used his body as a means of Bolshevik propaganda and of strengthening their power. In 1930, Shchusev designed and erected a new mausoleum of granite. A sarcophagus with Stalin's body was kept here for some time but during the "thaw" announced by Khrushchev it was removed and buried at the Kremlin wall among the graves of prominent Soviet men.