St. Basil's Cathedral

The builders used red bricks to make the walls.

The middle church has a tall, pointy roof like a tent. The other churches stand around it in a ring. The bright colors were painted on much later.

The builders made the cathedral from red brick. According to the architectural historian William Brumfield, Russian builders had learned new ways of building tall brick towers from Italian architects, who had worked in Moscow earlier. That skill let them give the central church a steep, pointed tented roof. When it was finished, the cathedral was the tallest structure in the city.

The chapels stand in a mostly balanced pattern around the center. The onion domes were added after a fire in the 1580s, and the bright colors came even later, between the late 1600s and the mid-1800s, as fashions changed.

CNN, drawing on the historian William Brumfield, explains that between 1475 and 1510 Italian architects rebuilt the Kremlin and two major churches, bringing Renaissance brick technology that let Russian builders raise tall vertical forms, including the steep tented roof of St. Basil's central church. CNN describes the finished building as the tallest structure in Moscow at the time.

The present onion domes, flared cupolas later typical of Russian Orthodox architecture, are known to date from after the fire, though how the building looked before it is uncertain; Brumfield suggests St. Basil's may have been among the first in the region to adopt them. UNESCO credits the 17th century with the cathedral's present appearance, through the decorative finishing of the domes and painting inside and out, and CNN dates the vivid colors to the late 17th to mid-19th centuries. A bell tower was later added, and the interior gained floral decoration and figurative murals.

Today, St. Basil's is a museum.

Visitors climb steep steps and walk through the little churches. In front stands a big statue of two men from long ago.

Today the cathedral is a branch of the State Historical Museum, which calls itself Russia's largest national museum and stands at the other end of Red Square. Visitors explore the ten churches, but the steps are high and the upper floor cannot be reached by wheelchair.

The cathedral has survived many dangers: big fires in the 1580s and in 1737, Napoleon's army in 1812, and the threat of being torn down in the 1930s. In front of it stands a bronze monument to Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, two leaders from the year 1612. It was moved there in 1930.

The cathedral is a branch of the State Historical Museum, which describes itself as Russia's largest national museum; the museum notes that high steps and a stair-only second floor limit access for strollers and wheelchairs.

CNN lists the threats it has survived: a damaging fire in 1737, a near escape from being blown up by Napoleon's forces in 1812, and the threat of demolition under Stalin in the 1930s. Britannica records that in 1930 the monument to Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, leaders of the army that forced the surrender of Polish forces in 1612, was moved from the center of Red Square to its present place in front of St. Basil's to make room for parades and demonstrations.