The Church of St. Basil the Blessed is a votive church built by Ivan the Terrible in commemoration of the conquest of Kazan and Astrahan. At that time Russia was passing through a particularly intense phase of religious fervor. The young tsar, flushed with victory, wanted to signalize his military success as a triumph of the Cross over Islam. Because this was to be a memorial church, easy to access to all people of Moscow, Ivan decided on a site on the Red Square at the edge of the moat along the Kremlin.

St. Basil, for whom this extraordinary church was named, was a popular mendicant prophet and miracle worker of the 16th century who claimed as his distinctive glory that he was "Idiotic for Christ's sake". Idiocy was a common form of religious ferver in Russia, and this dedicated idiot (uyrodivyi ) was treated with reverence.

Begun in 1553, St.Basil's was finished and consecrated in 1560. It was designed by the Russian architects Barma and Posnik, who, in the words of the chronicler, were "very wise and eminently fir for this marvelous work". According to the persistent legend, the Church of St.Basil was designed by an Italian architect, who was then blinded by order of the tsar so that the Italian would not be able to produce a more beautiful church anywhere. Another version of the same legend says that the tsar asked the architect if he could build an even finer, more magnificent church. When architect replied that he could, the tsar ordered him beheaded so that St.Basil's would remain an unrivaled monument.