Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg is a major city in the central part of Russia, the administrative centre of Sverdlovsk Oblast. Situated on the eastern side of the Ural mountain range, it is the main industrial and cultural centre of the Urals Federal District with a population of 1,398,889 (2012) (up from 1,293,537 recorded in the 2002 Census), making it Russia's fourth-largest city. Between 1924 and 1991, the city was known as Sverdlovsk after the Bolshevik party leader Yakov Sverdlov.

Soon after the Russian Revolution, on July 17, 1918, Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra, and their children Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia (her death has been under dispute ever since), and Tsarevich Alexei were murdered by the Bolsheviks at the Ipatiev House in this city. Other members of the Romanov family were killed at Alapayevsk the day after. In 1977, the Ipatiev House was demolished by order of Boris Yeltsin, to prevent it from being used as a rallying location for monarchists. He later became the first President of Russia and represented the people at the funeral of the Tsar in 1998.

This card sent to me by Lisa shows photographs of some of the city’s theatre’s and museums in this well-known city. Especially the Opera House. Yekaterinburg is famous for its theaters, among which are some very popular theatre companies: the Yekaterinburg Academic Ballet and Opera Company, the Sverdlovsk Academic Theater of Musical Comedy, the Yekaterinburg Academic Dramatic Theater, the Yekaterinburg Theater for Young Spectators, the Volkhonka (a popular chamber theatre), and the Kolyada Theater (a chamber theatre founded by Russian playwright, producer and actor Nikolai Kolyada). Yekaterinburg is the centre of New Drama, a movement of the contemporary Russian playwrights Nikolai Kolyada, Vasily Sigarev, Konstantin Kostenko, the Presnyakov brothers, and Oleg Bogayev. Yekaterinburg is often called the capital of contemporary dance for a number of famous dance companies residing in the city: the Kipling, the Provincial Dances, the Tantstrest, and a special department of contemporary dance at the Yekaterinburg University of Humanities.