Lubyanka Building, Moscow

Colloquially referred to as Lubyanka, the historic national headquarters of the KGB is presently occupied by the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation. The large Neo-Baroque building was designed by Alexander V. Ivanov in 1897.

What's remarkable, is that originally the edifice was meant to accommodate the All-Russia Insurance Company Rossiya, but was built on the spot where Catherine the Great had once headquartered her secret police. Perhaps not surprisingly that after the Bolshevik Revolution, the government seized the structure and put their newly-established secret police, known as Cheka, there in 1918. For several decades afterwards, the building would cast terror in the hearts of Muscovites because of the affiliated prison situated behind this otherwise peaceful yellow-brick façade, crowned with a hammer and sickle coat of arms and a clock at the center.

Operational since 1920, the prison was located on the top floor. It had no windows, and therefore most inmates erroneously believed they were kept in the basement. Thence the common joke that Lubyanka is "the tallest building in Moscow", since Siberia (an euphemism for Gulag) could be seen from its basement. Among those who were held and interrogated at Lubyanka at various times were Sidney Reilly, Raoul Wallenberg, Ion Antonescu, Osip Mandelstam, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and many others. The interrogations stopped in 1953 after the death of Stalin. During the 1980s, the prison was partially turned into a cafeteria for the KGB staff. Another part was turned into a prison museum, to visit which a special authorization is required.

During the Great Purge of the 1930s, the Lubyanka offices became increasingly cramped due to the bloated staff numbers. In 1940, Aleksey Shchusev was commissioned to enlarge the building. By 1947, he had doubled Lubyanka in size horizontally by incorporating backstreet buildings, plus added another storey.

In the post-Soviet era, another museum inside the building (separate from the prison one upstairs), called the Historical Demonstration Hall of the Russian FSB, was opened to the public. For this, no special permit is required.