Ekaterinburg

City Tour

I am sorry for the overlap of posts with Leah and Sarah, but I won’t have access for the next couple of days, I think. 

I can’t post comments, so will say here, Ladies, beautiful work. I am glad to see you are making Art time around work time. Good! Looking forward to seeing your continuing works.

This morning my iPad died. Stone cold dead. So I was prepared for no more posts for a long while. But after our tour, we stopped at a mall, and a fellow at an Apple store did this and that and brought it back to life. So, until it dies again, here is another post. I didn’t have any way to get pictures for it this morning, but Maria sent me hers. 

City square, where the original church of the city sat, destroyed in the Revolution.

The chapel below replaces it.

This city was founded by Peter the Great in his reform and modernization of Russia in the 1700’s. Sweden had been the main exporter of iron, but Russia was always fighting with them so wanted its own source. This area has “every mineral on the periodic table,” according to our guide. Most gold coins come from here, too. So this was made to be an industrial city and still is. 

In these two log buildings, two brothers, Tartars, our guide said, started the first businesses in the city. In those days the richest people had wooden houses, and poor people had brick.


View out our window.

It is also notable as being the site of the Last imprisonment and execution of the czar and his family and attendants. This was July 16-17, 1918. Subsequent to their “martyrdom” they have been venerated and many churches built in their honor. A cluster are built on the site of the first place the bodies were dumped (later moved further, because the pit was too shallow and the bodies wouldn’t burn fast). The bodies were not found for quite awhile, the two youngest not until this century. 

The newly made memorial monastery, with seven churches and other buildings, all of logs. 

Site where the bodies were dumped.

Churches in the historic site.

Sculpture of the czar.

Time to get our train.