Yekaterinburg

People lived along the Iset long before the city: a Neolithic settlement with stone-working workshops has been excavated there, and Bronze Age peoples also lived in the area. The first Russian ironworks within today's boundaries was founded at Uktus in 1702, and in 1720 Peter the Great sent Vasily Tatishchev to the Urals to manage the mines, followed in 1722 by the engineer Georg Wilhelm de Gennin. They chose a better-watered site on the Iset, and the new ironworks, dam and fortress began work in November 1723. The town was named after the emperor's wife, the future Catherine I, and was at once a factory and a frontier fort between Europe and Asia.

The Siberian Route, opened through the city in 1763, made it a trading town, and by the early 19th century it was the capital of Russian mining, with its own mint and gold workings. In 1918 the deposed Nicholas II and his family were held in the Ipatiev House; as the Czechoslovak Legion closed in, they were murdered there in the early hours of 17 July.

Renamed Sverdlovsk in 1924, the city became a centre of Stalin's heavy industry, with the giant Uralmash plant, and its population tripled. In the Second World War it built armoured vehicles, took in evacuated factories and sheltered part of the Hermitage collections. In 1977 the Ipatiev House was demolished on a Politburo resolution, by order of the local party chief, Boris Yeltsin, and in 1979 an anthrax leak from a military facility caused an outbreak in the city. During the 1991 coup attempt Yeltsin named it a reserve capital, and in September 1991 it took back the name Yekaterinburg. It hosted the BRIC and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summits in 2009 and World Cup matches in 2018.

Yekaterinburg likes to call itself Russia's third capital, and its cultural life supports the claim: about 50 museums, the third-largest number of theatres in the country, the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra and an opera house that won four Golden Masks in 2020. Its stages range from the drama and musical comedy theatres to the Kolyada-Theatre. The writers Pavel Bazhov and Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak, who described the old Ural works, are remembered in the United Museum of Ural Writers.

The city is the home of "Ural rock" — Nautilus Pompilius, Chaif, Agata Kristi and Urfin Dzhyus were all formed here — and today it calls itself Russia's capital of street art. Stenograffia, held each year, is considered the largest and oldest street-art festival in Russia. Architecturally the city is known for constructivism: more than 140 buildings of the 1920s–30s, from housing blocks to the White Tower at Uralmash, now overlooked by the new glass towers of Yekaterinburg City.

The city has had an independent streak. In 2013 it elected Yevgeny Roizman of the Civil Platform party, founder of the icon museum, as mayor — the last direct mayoral election before they were abolished in 2018. The Romanov murder has made it a centre of Orthodox pilgrimage, and each July a procession walks from the Church on the Blood to Ganina Yama.

About 1.55 million people lived in Yekaterinburg at the start of 2025, and up to 2.2 million in the wider urban area. It is the fourth city of Russia and the capital of the Urals Federal District, and its economy ranks third in the country after Moscow and St Petersburg.

In Soviet times industry made up almost all of the economy, much of it for defence. Today metalworking and machine-building — Uralmash, the turbine plant, copper and steel companies — sit beside banking, trade, logistics and software; the city has the regional headquarters of the Central Bank and the largest software firm in Russia, SKB Kontur. Wages and retail spending are among the highest of Russia's big cities, and the Ural Federal University is the largest in the country. The Central Military District is commanded from here.

Most people live in Soviet housing estates, from the five-storey blocks of the 1960s in Kirovsky and Chkalovsky districts to newer towers in Akademicheskiy. Residents name healthcare, housing and transport as the city's main problems; the metro, with one line, struggles with old trains and too little money. Winter shapes the year, from the long heating season to cross-country skiing on trails around the city.

Pelmeni are tied to the region's history. These dumplings, a filling wrapped in thin unleavened dough and considered a national dish, became a Russian staple during the expansion into the Urals and Siberia, and their name was borrowed from the Komi and Udmurt languages. They are eaten smothered in butter or Siberian-style, sprinkled with vinegar and freshly ground pepper, and are commonly topped with sour cream or dill.

Beyond pelmeni the city eats in the Russian way: borsch and shchi, blini, kasha, pirozhki and cold okroshka in summer, with zakuski of pickled cucumbers and mushrooms, herring and black bread to open a proper meal. Tea is drunk strong with jam, and kvass is the traditional soft drink. Yekaterinburg has hundreds of stolovaya dining rooms, as well as many cafés and coffee houses.

Restaurants in the centre mostly offer the usual Russian mix of Russian, Japanese and Italian food. The Shartashsky market is the city's one agricultural market.