Red Square: Tickets, Hours and How to Visit
Red Square is free to walk into and open 24 hours, but nearly everything around its edges is a separate paid ticket, on a separate schedule, and that’s the part first-time visitors get wrong. Here’s the quick version before the sight-by-sight breakdown: Russia runs on the ruble, foreign Visa and Mastercard cards have not worked here since 2022 (bring cash), a visa is required for most Western nationalities (the e-visa skips the US, UK, Canada, and Australia), and both the US State Department and UK FCDO currently advise against travel to Russia, worth reading before you commit to dates. May, June, and September are the easiest months to visit.
None of that changes what’s actually here. St Basil’s eight lopsided, riotously colored domes, the Kremlin’s Cathedral Square at golden hour, and the metro stations a few minutes’ walk away that look more like ballrooms than transit hubs: this is one of the most visually loaded few hundred meters in Europe, and it earns the reputation.
Red Square’s sights, ranked by what you’ll actually pay
| Sight | What it is | Cost (RUB) | Hours / closed day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red Square itself | The open square, free 24/7 | Free | Open, but closes around Victory Day rehearsals |
| St Basil’s Cathedral | Separate ticket, State Historical Museum branch | ~700-2,000 (sources vary) | Verify current hours at booking, no fixed weekly closure confirmed |
| Kremlin: Cathedral Square | Cathedrals and grounds inside the walls | 1,100 standard / 600 discounted | 9:30-18:00 May-Sep, 10:00-17:00 Oct-May; closed Thursdays |
| Kremlin: Armoury Chamber | Faberge eggs, coronation regalia, separate ticket | 1,400 standard / 800 discounted | Four fixed entries: 10:00, 12:00, 14:30, 16:30; closed Thursdays |
| Lenin’s Mausoleum | Free, no bags, no photos | Free | Tue/Wed/Thu/Sat/Sun, 10:00-13:00 only |
| State Historical Museum | Frescoed 19th-century interior, medieval-to-Soviet collection | ~500-1,000 depending on ticket | Closed Tuesdays |
| GUM | Private shopping arcade, not a Soviet-era store | Free to enter | Open daily |
Is St Basil’s Cathedral part of the Kremlin?
No, and this trips up more people than any other fact about the square. St Basil’s is a freestanding building at the south end of Red Square, administratively a branch of the State Historical Museum, with its own ticket and its own line. The Kremlin’s walls and its two separate tickets, Cathedral Square and the Armoury Chamber, are a different building entirely, on the square’s western edge.
Why does the Kremlin need two different tickets?
Because Cathedral Square and the Armoury Chamber are physically and administratively separate experiences inside the same walled complex. Cathedral Square covers the grounds and the cluster of cathedrals, Assumption, Archangel, Annunciation, for 1,100 RUB standard or 600 discounted. The Armoury Chamber, the Faberge eggs and imperial carriages, is a timed ticket at 1,400 RUB or 800 discounted, admitting only at four fixed slots a day. Both close Thursdays, book at kreml.ru starting 17 days ahead, and arrive 45 minutes early for airport-style security screening.
Is Lenin’s Mausoleum actually worth visiting?
It’s free and it’s genuinely strange in a way photos don’t capture, but the window is narrow: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, 10:00 to 13:00 only, no photography, no bags. Go first thing on a day it’s open rather than treating it as an afternoon add-on, since the three-hour window doesn’t bend around anything else on your schedule, and restoration work has closed it for stretches through 2026, so confirm it’s open before you build a day around it.
GUM, and the one thing people get wrong about it
GUM is the grand 1893 glass-roofed arcade on the square’s eastern side, and it’s a private, for-profit upscale mall today, not a functioning Soviet department store, despite keeping the old acronym after 1990s privatization. It’s free to walk through even if you’re not buying anything, and the ground-floor ice cream counter serves the same recipe sold here in Soviet times.
Getting there and where to stay nearby
The nearest metro stations are Okhotny Ryad, Teatralnaya, and Ploshchad Revolyutsii, a single ride costs 75 RUB on a Troika card , and two of the system’s most photographed stations, Komsomolskaya and Mayakovskaya, are a short ride away on the circle line. For a place to stay within walking distance, check current rates on Ostrovok.ru , which accepts foreign Mastercard online (not Visa) or cash at check-in.
Go early, before 8am, or after dark, when the floodlighting on St Basil’s and the Kremlin walls does exactly what it was designed to do and the crowds thin to almost nothing. For the full day-by-day version of a Moscow trip built around this square, see our 2-day through 7-day itineraries, or the full travel guide for everything else you need before you land.