page_title: Yekaterinburg
section_title: Imperial era
hierarchical_section_title: Yekaterinburg / History / Imperial era
caption_attribution_description: View of Yekaterinburg in 1789; russian: Вид Екатеринбурга в 1789. На картине видна Большая Першпективная дорога, проходящая через плотину Екатеринбургского завода (ныне Проспект Ленина), на горизонте выделяются здания церкви Малый Златоуст (слева, 1755-1768 годы постройки), Канцелярии горного правления (в центре, 1737-1739), Кафедрального собора( справа, 1771-1774)
context_page_description: Yekaterinburg, alternatively romanized Ekaterinburg, is the largest city and the administrative centre of Sverdlovsk Oblast. The city is located on the Iset River in Western Siberia, with a population of 1,493,749 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-largest city, and one of the main cultural and industrial centres of Russia. Yekaterinburg has been dubbed the "Third capital of Russia", as it is ranked third by the size of economy, culture, transportation and tourism.
  The region was settled and developed by Novgorodians by the 11th century.
  Yekaterinburg was founded on 18 November 1723 and named after the Russian emperor Peter the Great's wife, who after his death became Catherine I, Yekaterina being the Russian form of her name. The city served as the mining capital of the Russian Empire as well as a strategic connection between Europe and Asia at the time. In 1781, Catherine the Great gave Yekaterinburg the status of a district town of Perm Province, and built the main road of the Empire, the Siberian Route, through the city.
context_section_description: Russian historian Vasily Tatishchev and Russian engineer Georg Wilhelm de Gennin founded Yekaterinburg with the construction of a massive iron-making plant under the decree of Russian emperor Peter the Great in 1723. They named the city after the emperor's wife, Yekaterina, who later became empress regnant Catherine I.  Officially, the city's founding date is 18 November 1723, when the shops carried out a test run of the bloomery for trip hammers. The plant was commissioned 6 days later, on 24 November.  It was the largest and most advanced metallurgical enterprise in the world.  It was granted town status in 1796.
  The city was one of Russia's first industrial cities, prompted at the start of the 18th century by decrees from the Tsar requiring the development in Yekaterinburg of metalworking industries. The city was built, with extensive use of iron, to a regular square plan with iron works and residential buildings at the centre. These were surrounded by fortified walls, so that Yekaterinburg was at the same time both a manufacturing centre and a fortress at the frontier between Europe and Asia. It therefore found itself at the heart of Russia's strategy for further development of the entire Ural region. The so-called Siberian Route became operational in 1763 and placed the city on an increasingly important transit route, which led to its development as a focus of trade and commerce between east and west, and gave rise to the description of the city as the "window to Asia". With the growth in trade and the city's administrative importance, the ironworks became less critical, and the more important buildings were increasingly built using expensive stone. Small manufacturing and trading businesses proliferated. In 1781 Russia's empress, Catherine the Great, nominated the city as the administrative centre for the wider region.
  Following the October Revolution, the family of deposed Tsar Nicholas II was sent to internal exile in Yekaterinburg where they were imprisoned in the Ipatiev House in the city. In July 1918, the Czechoslovak Legions were closing on Yekaterinburg. In the early hours of the morning of 17 July, the deposed Tsar, his wife Alexandra, and their children Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Tsarevich Alexei were executed by the Bolsheviks at the Ipatiev House. Other members of the Romanov family were killed at Alapayevsk later the same day. The Legions arrived less than a week later and captured the city. The city remained under the control of the White movement in which a provisional government was established. The Red Army took back the city and restored Soviet authority on 14 July 1919.
caption: Yekaterinburg, 1789
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