Yekaterinburg

The area was settled in prehistory. The earliest settlements date to 8000–7000 BC, in the Mesolithic period. The Isetskoe Pravoberezhnoye I archaeological site contains a Neolithic settlement dated to 6000–5000 BC. It includes stone processing workshops with artefacts such as grinding plates, anvils, clumps of rock, tools, and finished products. Over 50 different types of rock and minerals were used in tool making, indicating extensive knowledge of the region's natural resources. The Gamayun peninsula (left bank of the Verkh-Isetsky Pond) has archaeological findings from the Chalcolithic Period: workshops for producing stone tools (upper area) and two dwellings of the Ayat culture (lower area). There are also traces of the Koptyak culture from 2000 BC: dishes decorated with bird images and evidence of metallurgical production. …

Geographically, Yekaterinburg is in North Asia, close to the Ural Mountains (which divide Europe from Asia), 1,667 km (1,036 mi) east of the nation's capital Moscow. The city has a total area of 1,111 km2 (429 sq mi). Yekaterinburg is on the eastern side of the Urals. The city is surrounded by wooded hills, partially cultivated for agricultural purposes. Yekaterinburg is located on a natural watershed, so there would be many bodies of water close and in the city. The city is bisected by the Iset River, which flows from the Urals into the Tobol River. There are two lakes in the city, Lake Shuvakish and Lake Shartash. The city borders Verkh-Isetskiy Pond, through which the Iset River flows. Lake Isetskoye and Lake Baltym are both near the city, with Lake Isetskoye located near Sredneuralsk, and Lake Baltym located near the towns of Sanatornyy and Baltym. …

Yekaterinburg is a multipurpose cultural centre of the Urals Federal District. There are about fifty libraries in the city. The largest library organisations are the Sverdlovsk Oblast Universal Scientific Library, the V.G. Belinsky Scientific Library, which is the largest public library in Sverdlovsk Oblast, and the Municipal Library Association, which is composed of 41 libraries throughout the city, including the AI Herzen Central City Library. There are about 50 different museums in the city. Yekaterinburg has unique museum collections, such as the collections of Russian paintings in the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts and the Nevyansk icons in the Nevyansk Icon Museum, with more than 300 icons representing the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries on display. …

Yekaterinburg is one of the largest economic centres in Russia. It is included in the City-600 list (it unites the 600 largest cities in the world that produce 60% of global GDP), compiled by the McKinsey Global Institute, a research organisation. In 2010, the consulting company estimated the gross product of Yekaterinburg to be about $19 billion (according to the calculations of the company, it should grow to $40 billion by 2025). By volume of the economy, Yekaterinburg ranks third in the country, after Moscow and St. Petersburg. According to a research of the Institute for Urban Economics, in the ranking of the largest cities and regional capital cities according to economic standards for 2015, Yekaterinburg ranked third. The city's gross urban product (GVP) was 898 billion rubles. Per capita GDP was 621.0 thousand rubles (18th place). …

Yekaterinburg is the third largest transport hub of Russia, behind Moscow and St. Petersburg. The city has 6 federal highways, 7 main railway lines, and an international airport. The location of Yekaterinburg in the central part of the region allows for 7 to 10 hours to get from it to any large city of the Urals. The formation of Yekaterinburg as an important transportation hub is largely due to the city's favourable geographical location on a low stretch of the Ural Mountains, through which it was convenient to lay the main roads connecting the European and Eastern parts of Russia. Yekaterinburg is one of the ten Russian megacities with the largest car fleet (0.437 megacars were registered in the city in 2014), which has been intensively increasing in recent years (by 6–14% annually). The level of car ownership in 2015 has reached 410 cars per 1,000 people. …

According to the results of the 2021 Census, the population of Yekaterinburg was 1,544,376; up from 1,349,772 recorded in the 2010 Census. As of 2021, the ethnic composition of Yekaterinburg was: Christianity is the predominant religion in the city, of which most are adherents to the Russian Orthodox Church. The Yekaterinburg and Verkhotursky diocese is located in the Holy Trinity Cathedral in the city. Other religions practised in Yekaterinburg include Islam, Old Believers, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism. Yekaterinburg has a significant Muslim community, but it suffers from a lack of worship space: there are only two small mosques. Another mosque was built in the nearby city of Verkhnyaya Pyshma. …