Lobnoye Mesto
stone platform on Red Square in Moscow
Lobnoye mesto (Russian: Лобное место) is a 13-meter-long stone platform situated in the Red Square in Moscow in front of Saint Basil's Cathedral.
Its name is derived from the Russian words for 'forehead' (lob) and 'place' (Mesto). In Old Russian lob meant 'a steep river bank'. The platform, believed to have been constructed in brick in the 1530s, was first mentioned in 1547, when Ivan the Terrible addressed the Muscovites from there. Subsequently, it was primarily used for announcing the tsar's ukazes and for religious ceremonies. Despite a common misconception, the circular platform itself was never a place for executions. Sometimes scaffolds were placed by it, but usually public executions were carried out at Vasilevsky Spusk behind St. Basil's Cathedral.
In the Russian Empire, during Holy Week, the Palm Sunday procession called "donkey walk" would end at the Lobnoye Mesto where a depiction of Calvary had been erected. The Tsar himself, on foot to show humility, would lead the Patriarch of Moscow, who was seated on a donkey, in a procession from the city gates to Red Square.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1589656. Authority coordinates are 55.753, 37.623. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1547.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lobnoye Mesto” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.