Ministry of Foreign Affairs Building

The building of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs rises above Smolenskaya-Sennaya Square — one of Moscow’s seven Stalinist “Seven Sisters” skyscrapers and, arguably, the most unusual of them in silhouette: with its sharp edges and upward thrust, the structure recalls New York’s Woolworth Building and the neo-Gothic skyscrapers of interwar America.

The plot for the skyscraper has a long construction history: in 1931, work began here on a House of Foreign Tourism, which was then renamed the House of Proletarian Tourism, and in 1939 the unfinished structure was incorporated as a wing of the building for the People’s Commissariat of Meat and Dairy Industry — the war prevented this plan from being realized. The pre-war buildings along Arbat Street and Denezhny Lane later became part of the skyscraper’s ensemble. The Foreign Ministry building itself was laid alongside the other high-rises on September 7, 1947, but actual construction to the design of architects Vladimir Gelfreikh and Mikhail Minkus only began in October 1948 and was completed by 1952–1953; it was built in an unusual way — from the top down, extending the frame and pouring concrete floors as the structure descended toward the foundation.

The central part of the building has 27 floors and reaches a height of 172 meters; the lower tier is faced in red granite, while the walls above are clad in light-colored ceramic tiles. At a height of 114 meters, a reinforced-concrete emblem of the USSR measuring 144 square meters is mounted, and the portals are decorated with stucco ornamentation by sculptor Georgy Motovilov. The terraced composition, with its gradually narrowing tiers, links the high-rise section to the six-story wings and the surrounding residential development.

According to the original design, the building was to be topped by a rectangular tower without a spire, but on the eve of the 34th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1951, it was decided to crown the skyscraper with a decorative metal spire weighing 350 tons — against Gelfreikh’s objections. Due to the fragility of the structure, the Foreign Ministry building remained the only one of the Stalinist skyscrapers without a five-pointed star. According to legend, after Stalin’s death, architect Minkus asked Khrushchev for permission to dismantle the spire, but was refused, with the instruction to leave it as “a monument to Stalin’s folly.”

By the 2010s, the spire’s cladding had rusted badly, and in 2016–2017 the structure was completely replaced with a 250-ton replica. The work was unexpectedly complicated by a peregrine falcon nest that had settled on the upper tiers: specialists chose not to disturb the birds and, after the renovation, built an artificial nesting niche into the new spire, to which the falcons later returned. Today the building, with a total area of 65,000 square meters, houses dozens of diplomatic departments, and its marble lobby and 500-seat assembly hall retain their original Stalin-era finishes.

The Foreign Ministry building remains one of the most recognizable architectural landmarks of central Moscow’s western part — a monument not only to Soviet diplomacy but also to ambitious post-war urban planning, which managed to fit a neo-Gothic skyscraper into the silhouette of the historic city.