Vasilyevsky Descent

Vasilyevsky Descent is an open square in the very center of Moscow, occupying the space between Red Square and the embankment of the Moskva River along the eastern stretch of the Kremlin wall. The gentle slope descends from St. Basil's Cathedral to the Moskva River and serves as one of the city's main venues for large public events — concerts, fairs and festive celebrations.

The square received its present name only in 1995, after the Cathedral of the Intercession, better known as St. Basil's Cathedral, at the foot of which it is located. Before that, starting in 1924, the territory was formally considered part of Red Square, and even earlier it was part of Vasilyevskaya Square, which appeared on city plans in the 19th century. In the 18th century, the space now occupied by the descent was filled with dense residential development stretching all the way to the fortress moat, and the square acquired its present open outline as a result of a redevelopment at the start of the 19th century.

Starting in 1909, trams ran along the descent, continuing their route through Red Square; the line was removed by the mid-1950s, and in 1936 the last old buildings in this area were demolished. The descent is connected to the opposite bank of the river and to Bolshaya Ordynka Street by the system of the Bolshoy and Maly Moskvoretsky bridges; the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge acquired its present appearance in 1938, when it was rebuilt in a solid concrete structure.

The most notorious episode in the square's history was the landing of a light aircraft on May 28, 1987: eighteen-year-old German amateur pilot Mathias Rust crossed the Soviet border practically unnoticed and, after circling over the center of Moscow, landed his single-engine Cessna on Vasilyevsky Descent. He spent about an hour talking with the Muscovites who had gathered and signing autographs before he was detained. The incident led to the dismissal of the USSR's minister of defense and the commander of the air defense forces, as well as a large-scale purge of the top military command.

In the post-Soviet decades the square became a popular concert venue: on May 24, 2003, Paul McCartney performed here — according to various estimates, the show gathered around a hundred thousand spectators and became one of the most talked-about cultural events of the decade in Russia. Since then, Vasilyevsky Descent has regularly hosted major festivals, including Maslenitsa celebrations and other city-wide festivities.

Today the square remains a multifunctional public space at the very heart of the capital: combining the role of a pedestrian thoroughfare between Red Square and the embankment with its function as the city's main open-air concert stage, it continues to be one of Moscow's most recognizable venues for mass events.