Lubyanka Square

Lubyanka Square in the early 1900s.

Dzerzhinsky Square 1966, with the Dzerzhinsky statue.

Lubyanka Square (Russian: Лубянская площадь, Lubyanskaya ploshchad’) in Moscow is about 900 metres (980 yd) north east of Red Square. The name is first mentioned in 1480, when Ivan III settled many Novgorodians in the area. They built the church of St Sophia, modelled after St Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod, and called the area Lubyanka after the Lubyanitsy district of their native city.

Lubyanka Square is best known for Aleksandr V. Ivanov's monumental building from 1897 to 1898. It was originally used by the insurance company Rossiya, but it is better known for later housing the headquarters of the KGB in its various incarnations and today housing that of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). The square was renamed Dzerzhinsky Square for many years (1926–1990) in honor of the founder of the Soviet security service, Felix Dzerzhinsky. Yevgeny Vuchetich's monumental statue of Dzerzhinsky (nicknamed Iron Felix) was erected in the center of the square in 1958.

Opposite of the FSB building is the massive Detsky Mir (Russian: Де́тский мир; Children World), Europe's largest children's store. It was built between 1953 and 1957 and fully restored in 2014. It also hosts in its main atrium the world's largest mechanical clock movement: Raketa Monumental.

On October 30, 1990, the Memorial organization erected a monument to the victims of the Gulag, a simple stone from the Solovki prison camp. In 1991 the statue of Dzerzhinsky was removed following the failure of the coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev, and the square's original name was officially restored.

The Moscow Metro station Lubyanka is located under Lubyanka Square.

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  KGB building in 1983

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  The new monument ("Solovki stone")

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  A less common view