Lubyanka (KGB)

The Lubyanka (Russian: Лубя́нка; IPA: [lʊˈbʲankə]) is the popular name for the headquarters of the KGB and affiliated prison on Lubyanka Square in Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Neo-Baroque building with a facade of yellow brick designed by Alexander V. Ivanov in 1897 and augmented by Aleksey Shchusev from 1940 to 1947.

The Lubyanka was originally built in 1898 as the headquarters of the All-Russia Insurance Company. It is noted for its beautiful parquet floors and pale green walls. Belying its massiveness, the edifice avoids an impression of heroic scale: isolated Palladian and Baroque details, such as the minute pediments over the corner bays and the central loggia, are lost in an endlessly repeating palace facade where three bands of cornices emphasize the horizontal lines. A clock is centered in the uppermost band of the facade.

Following the Bolshevik Revolution, the structure was seized by the government for the headquarters of the secret police, then called the Cheka. In Soviet Russian jokes, it was referred to as the tallest building in Moscow, since Siberia (a euphemism for the Gulag labour camp system) could be seen from its basement.

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