In the middle of the 16th century, the wooden Church of the Holy Trinity, which at times also gave the square its name, stood exactly on the site of St. Basil's Cathedral. In 1555, the then Tsar Ivan the Terrible ordered a monumental church to be built on this site as a token of thanks to the Blessed Mother for the victory of Tsarist Russia over the Kazan Khanate three years earlier should be - according to the tradition of the time to have houses of God built to commemorate military victories. The wooden church was then demolished and the present stone cathedral was built on this site by 1561, making it one of the oldest buildings on the square. The name of the cathedral, which is still more common today, was given in memory of Basil the Blessed, a fool who was also venerated by Tsar Ivan at the time, who died around 1552 and was buried near the cathedral. Almost nothing is known about the architects of the cathedral, Barma and Postnik Jakowlew (according to some hypotheses, they are actually one and the same person).