Sennaya Square got its name from the fact that it sold hay for horses and other livestock. In 1952, it was renamed the Peace Square, and forty years later it was returned to its former name.

Historically, Sennoy was a slum, a district of the urban poor, where wild manners reigned. If someone was caught cheating or robbing, they were immediately flogged in public on Sennaya Square.

These places are described more than once in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment. When you come to Sennaya today, you think that little has changed here since then, and you can still meet modern Raskolnikov and an old woman interest in the courtyards.

Until 1961, the square was decorated with the Assumption Church, which was a vivid example of late Baroque architecture. The temple was blown up together with the neighboring apartment building in the wake of another anti-religious campaign. So that the explosion did not damage neighboring buildings, it was calculated in such a way that all its power went into the ground. However, many researchers claim that its consequences even affected the piles of St. Isaac's Cathedral. Now there is a small chapel on the site of the church, but the parish hopes to revive the shrine.

For many years, Sennaya Square remained a large retail outlet with lots of stalls and tents. In autumn 2016, the square was cleared to gradually turn it into a convenient urban space.