October Square — Kastrychnitskaya Ploshcha in Belarusian — is the political and symbolic heart of the city, a vast paved expanse that makes even Red Square in Moscow feel intimate. The scale is deliberate: Soviet architects designed postwar Minsk to be a model city of the new world, and its central square needed to accommodate mass rallies and military parades.
On the south side of the square stands the Palace of the Republic, an enormous culture-and-congress hall whose construction was started in the Soviet era and only completed in 2001. On the north side is the Minsk Hero City Obelisk, a tall granite column commemorating the city's designation as a Hero City for its resistance during World War II.
The square connects to Independence Avenue (Praspiekt Niezaliezhnastsi), the main boulevard that runs through the city. Walking its length — from the train station to the Academy of Sciences — gives you the best single view of Minsk's Stalinist architectural ambition.