|
 |
 |
|
| |
||||||||
|
|
|||||||
 
  |
   History Yekaterinburg Omsk Novosibirsk Krasnoyarsk Irkutsk Ulan-Ude Khabarovsk Vladivostok Tours
Catherine I was the second wife of the Czar Peter the Great and it was her practical good sense which helped establish this important industrial and mining center - so Peter named the city in her honor. Yekaterinburg was most notoriously the scene of the assassination of the Romanov Royal Family in 1918. In 1924, Yekaterinburg was renamed to Sverdlovsk, after one of the revolutionary leaders. During the Soviet period, Sverdlovsk grew rapidly to become one of the biggest industrial, cultural, and scientific centers of Russia. During WWII, Sverdlovsk grew enormously, as the city was geared up to serve the front. Equipment was moved in from evacuated factories, and general investment into the war industry kept the city growing. Modern Yekaterinburg reflects the rapidly changing tastes of different historical periods in its architecture. The population is now close to 1.5 million. Ekaterinburg is also notable for being the hometown of Boris Yeltsin.
Things to see and doThe Museum of City Architecture and Urals Industrial Technology. Among many exhibits one is particularly interesting. It is called the “Ural in the 18th century” and features wax mannequins of the bearded Czar Nicholas, Empress Alexandra, their sickly heir Alexei and their four beautiful daughters all portrayed in a pleasant family pose.
Museum of Fine Arts - there are a lot of good examples of local crafts and arts there. Ural Geology Museum which has over 500 carefully catalogued Ural-region minerals and collection of meteorites. The “Ganya’s pit”. After the Emperor and his family were executed in the basement of the Ipatievsky house, their bodies were then taken some 30 kilometers (19 miles) outside of the city, stripped and thrown into a mineshaft called by locals “Ganya’s pit”. In 1979 the bones were found, but kept secret until 1991. In 2000, the head of the Russian church, Patriarch Alexei II, visited and blessed the site. A few small wooden chapels were built around the pit to provide services to visitors. The Cathedral of Ascension of the Lord. After 80 years, Yekaterinburg finally had a chance to bow and ask for forgiveness on July 15, 1998, at the funeral of the Royal family, held at the local cathedral. The next day, coffins with the remains of Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, three of their five children and four of their servants were transported to St. Petersburg by plane and buried at the Peter and Paul Fortress.  |
 |
The Trans-Siberian's first major stop in Asian Russia is the major industrial city and transport hub of Yekaterinburg. Ekaterinburg is located in the middle section of the Ural mountain chain. The city has always been reasonably prosperous, as one can see from the number of patrician houses and mansions around the city center. Contrary to popular opinion, the city's name (which translates as "Catherine's City") is not due to Empress Catherine II ("the Great"), but an earlier Catherine. 
The "Ipatievsky House and Church “On the blood”. In the minds of many people, this site is "The Russian Calvary." After multiple relocations after their arrest in 1917, the Emperor and his family end up in Yekaterinburg under strict home arrest in the house of local engineer Ipatiev. A few month later, in July of 1918, the family and servants are shot in cold blood... In the 1960s, in an attempt to erase the horrific memories of this senseless crime, the Ipatiev House was demolished ...and only after "Perestroika," in the 1990s, did the story come alive again uncovering many hidden facts, reinforcing the guilt. Soon after the Russian Church canonized Czar Nicolas II and built a cathedral right on the spot where the execution took place.
