Just outside the eastern Kremlin wall, facing Red Square, is the Lenin Mausoleum, which contains the embalmed corpse of the first Soviet leader, Vladimir Ilich Lenin, who died in 1924. Lying in a glass casket, his orange-tinted face and hands look waxy and are bathed in a halo of light. When it was suggested that the mausoleum could be closed down, communist extremists strongly protested by blowing up a monument to Nicholas II, so the subject has remained on hold ever since.

Ironically, Lenin wanted to be buried beside his mother in St Petersburg's Volkov Cemetery. However, his resting place is a rare masterpiece of modern architectural simplicity. Essentially a pyramid of cubes, it is made up of red granite (representing Communism) and black labrodite (for mourning). The uniformed guards that once flanked the entrance are now no longer there, but according to the authorities thousands of curious visitors still flock to the tomb during the summer.