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The square got its name from the magnificent pillar of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower. This, the biggest of all the Kremlin's squares, was a hive of activity over three centuries ago. It was the site of the so-called Prikazy (Offices), the equivalent of today's Ministries, where hoards of visitors came bearing requests. Among these Offices was the Yamskoi Prikaz, which handled the delivery of private letters, and thus became the first postal address in Moscow. The square also witnessed the public announcements, before the Muscovite crowds, of various decisions of state. It is said that this is the source of the still popular Russian saying "To shout across Ivanovskaya" - meaning to shout loudly enough to be heard in the farthest corners of the square.
Nowadays, the square, like most of the territory of the Kremlin, is cobbled. At the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s, the Maly Nikolaevsky Palace and the Monastery of The Ascension were destroyed, making Ivanovskaya Square even bigger. Part of the Senate building, and the fasade of the administrative block that was erected in 1929, in place of the destroyed historic buildings, now face onto the square.
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