Theme Week Moscow – The Lubyanka Building

Wednesday, 19 September 2012 - 01:30 pm (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination:
Category/Kategorie: General
Reading Time:  2 minutes

Lubyanka Building © Bjørn Christian Tørrissen/GFDL

Lubyanka Building © Bjørn Christian Tørrissen/GFDL

The Lubyanka is the popular name for the headquarters of the KGB and affiliated prison on Lubyanka Square in Moscow. It is a large Neo-Baroque building with a facade of yellow brick designed by Alexander V. Ivanov in 1897 and augmented by Aleksey Shchusev from 1940 to 1947.

The Lubyanka was originally built in 1898 as the headquarters of the All-Russia Insurance Company. It is noted for its beautiful parquet floors and pale green walls. Belying its massiveness, the edifice avoids an impression of heroic scale: isolated Palladian and Baroque details, such as the minute pediments over the corner bays and the central loggia, are lost in an endlessly-repeating palace facade where three bands of cornices emphasize the horizontal lines. A clock is centered in the uppermost-band of the facade.

Memorial about Repression in USSR at Lubyanka Square © Vladimir OKC Memorial about Repression in USSR at Lubyanka Square © Vladimir OKC Lubyanka Building © Foma/GFDL Lubyanka Building - Entrance © Multimotyl/GFDL Lubyanka Building - All-Russia Insurance Company, before1917 © PD-Russia-2008 Lubyanka Building © Bjørn Christian Tørrissen/GFDL
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Lubyanka Building - All-Russia Insurance Company, before1917 © PD-Russia-2008
After the dissolution of the KGB, the Lubyanka became the headquarters of the Border Guard Service of Russia, and houses the Lubyanka prison and one directorate of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). In addition a museum of the KGB (now called Историко-демонстрационный зал ФСБ России, Historical-demonstration hall of the Russian FSB) was opened to the public.

In 1990, the Solovetsky Stone was erected across from the Lubyanka to commemorate the victims of political repression.

Read more on Wikipedia Lubyanka Building. Photos by Wikipedia Commons.




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