Mausoleum of Lenin

Lenin's Mausoleum, also known as Lenin's Tomb, situated in Red Square in Moscow, is the resting place of Vladimir Lenin. His embalmed body has been on public display there since the year he died, 1924. Aleksey Shchusev's diminutive but monumental granite structure incorporates some elements from the ancient mausoleums, such as the Step Pyramid and the Tomb of Cyrus.

It is said that on January 21, the day that Lenin died, the Soviet government received more than 1000 telegrams from all over Russia, which asked to preserve his body somehow for future generations. On the morning of January 22, Professor Alexei Ivanovich Abrikosov—a prominent Russian pathologist and anatomist (not to be confused with physicist Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov)—embalmed Lenin's body to keep it intact until the burial. On the night of January 23, architect Aleksey Shchusev was given a task to complete within three days: design and build a tomb to accommodate all those who wanted to say their goodbyes to Lenin. On January 26, the decision was made to place the tomb at the Red Square by the Kremlin Wall. By January 27, Shchusev built a tomb out of wood and at 4 p.m. that day they placed Lenin's coffin in it. More than 100,000 people visited the tomb within a month and a half. By August of 1924, Shchusev upgraded the tomb to a bigger version. An architect Konstantin Melnikov designed Lenin's sarcophagus.