m5 yacht rodney lewis

Bar Harbor Story

Faster. smarter. news for our community.

Largest Single-Masted Ship Visits Southwest Harbor

And some other town news.

CARRIE JONES

JUL 23, 2024

SOUTHWEST HARBOR—A giant sailboat hasn’t been turning heads in Southwest Harbor this week—not exactly. It’s more like it’s raising those heads and chins and gazes as people look to the skies to locate the top of the largest single-masted sailing yacht in the world.

The  M5  has been docked in Southwest Harbor since last week.

One Southwest Harbor resident said that the 89-meter-mast can be seen over the trees at the town’s Causeway Club. That mast length is roughly the size of a football field. The boat itself is 78 meters long.

According to  SuperYachtFan , “The  superyacht  is the brainchild of Irish-based, New Zealand-born yacht designer, Ron Holland, a respected name in the industry. The intricate composite construction of the hull and rig was closely monitored and supervised by High Modulus Europe Ltd, a renowned Hamble-based firm.”

Yachtsinternational.com  says that  M5 ’s giant mast holds a 36,000-square-foot sail.

According to MarineTraffic , she had last been in Providence, Rhode Island. She arrived in Southwest Harbor, July 16.

It’s currently owned by Rodney Ray Lewis who founded  Lewis Energy Group , which is based in Texas. Lewis is a renowned pilot. He was a gauger in the late 1970s, purchased an oil well in 1982 for $13,000, and founded the company, which has operations in Texas, Mexico, and Colombia. He purchased his first plane a year before the well—a hand cranked Aeronca Chief. He’s also known as having what  Forbes  calls “one of the top vintage warbird collections in the country.”

There is often a plane resting on the back of the yacht. This is also the case in Southwest Harbor. Lewis’ father was a pilot in the Air Force.

OTHER BUSINESS IN SOUTHWEST HARBOR

Planning board.

In a quick meeting, the  Southwest Harbor Planning Board  reappointed its current officers for the upcoming year.

The board is made up of Eric Davis, chair (2028), Ken Salvatore (2028), Lee Worcester (2026), John Williams (2026), Priscilla Ksionzyk (2029), Michael S. Levesque (2029), Joel Wolak (2028). The members have five-year terms and are appointed by the Select Board

The board approved the request of Zachary Firestein of 16 Seawall Road. Firestein is raising the second floor by five feet and transferring a small piece of the structure to another part of the building. His request was unanimously approved.

​TOWN MANAGER SEARCH

A new candidate to replace Town Manager Marilyn Lowell was discussed at the Southwest Harbor Select Board’s emergency meeting last Wednesday and is on the agenda for an executive session this week as well. Lowell has said she intends to retire later this year.

POLICE AND DISPATCHER WAGES

Police contracts were also discussed in executive session. Select Board Chair Carolyn Ball said that the board approved a $4.00 increase for police officers and a $2.00 increase for dispatchers (per hour) starting this week for additional responsibilities for policing Tremont.

LINKS TO LEARN MORE

Boat International story about the M5

TONIGHT’S AGENDA

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• MaineBoats Blog

World's largest sloop sails the Maine coast

Thursday, september 13th 2018.

A sailboat reputed to be the largest single-masted yacht in the world was spotted recently cruising along the Maine coast, making stops in Portland and off Camden, where it was too big to fit into the harbor.

The 277-foot boat was designed by Ron Holland and built in 2004 in England at the Vosper Thornycroft yard for Joseph Vittoria, the former chairman and CEO of the Avis Rental Car Company. He named it Mirabella V (it has since beeen renamed M5) and chartered it out for $420,000 a week, according to an interview Vittoria gave to the Greenwich (Ct) Times in 2010.

Vittoria sold the boat in 2012, and according to the website Superyacht Fan, the new owner was Texas-based oil and gas billionaire Rodney Lewis.

M5’s mast is almost 300 feet tall and the boat has a beam of over 49 feet. The boat has a lifting keel and draws 33.5 feet with it down and 12.5 feet with it up. The sail area is a whopping 25,670 square feet with just the main and a working jib. Vittoria told the Greenwich Times that the boat was capable of sailing at 20 knots in a stiff breeze, but other reports place the top speed at 12 knots. According to BoatInternational.com, M5 is the largest single-masted sailing yacht in the world.

The vessel has a master suite and six additional cabins, and requires a crew of more than a dozen. It has room to carry Lasers, jet skis, and a 29-foot tender to carry passengers to and from the shore.

When M5 anchored off Camden, its mast could be seen towering over Curtis Island. Schooners sailing past looked like small rowboats in comparison to the massive yacht. According to the marine tracking app MarinTraffic.com, the vessel sailed to Portland from Newport, Rhode Island, to Boothbay and then to Camden.

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One of the world's largest sailing yachts arrives on Vancouver Island

One of the largest sailing yachts in the world cruised into a small Vancouver Island community this week, drawing a constant stream of onlookers to the Mill Bay Marina.

At 78 metres long and nearly 90 metres tall, the sloop M5 is hard to miss.

According to Boat International magazine, the Cayman-flagged vessel is the largest single-masted sailing yacht in the world.

The M5 sailed into the Saanich Inlet marina on Sunday, with a floatplane housed on its rear deck.

Built in 2004 by U.K. shipyard Vosper Thornycroft at an estimated US$50 million, the vessel is owned by Texas oil billionaire Rod Lewis, according to Boat International.

Marina staff say the vessel is due to depart on Friday.

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Largest single-masted sailboat ever built docks in Palma

'M5' megayacht, formerly 'Mirabella V' at anchor inside Apra Harbor, Guam. | Youtube: Dylan Hall

‘M5' is the largest single-masted sailboat ever built and she’s just docked at Club de Mar in Palma.

She weighs 1,017 tons, is 77 metres long and has a retractable keel , an 88 metre high mast with an automated rig to hoist 3,380 square metres of sail and can reach a maximum speed of 20 knots.

Designed by Ron Holland and built by VT Shipbuilding in the UK in 2004 for the former Avis CEO, Joseph Vittoria as part of a fleet of charter yachts, she was originally named ‘Mirabella V’.

She was sold to Rodney Lewis , Founder, President & CEO of the Texas oil and natural gas drilling company, Lewis Energy in 2014 and given a complete facelift by the Pendennis shipyard and renamed ‘M5’.

‘M5’ has a master suite on the main deck and 6 cabins and can accommodate 12 guests and 17 crew . Facilities onboard include a swimming pool and a garage jet skis, kayaks and small boats.

Fifteen years ago the Mirabella V sailed into Palma with Tom Hanks, Bruce Springsteen and Sting all on board. Bruce Springsteen booked a table for him and his star guests in his own name at the restaurant of the Hotel La Residencia. They all dined there but the island’s paparazzi never got a snip of their visit. They evaded us all!

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• Places - European, Western and Northern Russia

YEKATERINBURG: FACTORIES, URAL SIGHTS, YELTSIN AND THE WHERE NICHOLAS II WAS KILLED

Sverdlovsk oblast.

Sverdlovsk Oblast is the largest region in the Urals; it lies in the foothills of mountains and contains a monument indicating the border between Europe and Asia. The region covers 194,800 square kilometers (75,200 square miles), is home to about 4.3 million people and has a population density of 22 people per square kilometer. About 83 percent of the population live in urban areas. Yekaterinburg is the capital and largest city, with 1.5 million people. For Russians, the Ural Mountains are closely associated with Pavel Bazhov's tales and known for folk crafts such as Kasli iron sculpture, Tagil painting, and copper embossing. Yekaterinburg is the birthplace of Russia’s iron and steel industry, taking advantage of the large iron deposits in the Ural mountains. The popular Silver Ring of the Urals tourist route starts here.

In the summer you can follow in the tracks of Yermak, climb relatively low Ural mountain peaks and look for boulders seemingly with human faces on them. You can head to the Gemstone Belt of the Ural mountains, which used to house emerald, amethyst and topaz mines. In the winter you can go ice fishing, ski and cross-country ski.

Sverdlovsk Oblast and Yekaterinburg are located near the center of Russia, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia and also the southern and northern parts of Russia. Winters are longer and colder than in western section of European Russia. Snowfalls can be heavy. Winter temperatures occasionally drop as low as - 40 degrees C (-40 degrees F) and the first snow usually falls in October. A heavy winter coat, long underwear and good boots are essential. Snow and ice make the sidewalks very slippery, so footwear with a good grip is important. Since the climate is very dry during the winter months, skin moisturizer plus lip balm are recommended. Be alert for mud on street surfaces when snow cover is melting (April-May). Patches of mud create slippery road conditions.

Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg (kilometer 1818 on the Trans-Siberian Railway) is the fourth largest city in Russia, with of 1.5 million and growth rate of about 12 percent, high for Russia. Located in the southern Ural mountains, it was founded by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine, it was used by the tsars as a summer retreat and is where tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed and President Boris Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career. The city is near the border between Europe and Asia.

Yekaterinburg (also spelled Ekaterinburg) is located on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains in the headwaters of the Iset and Pyshma Rivers. The Iset runs through the city center. Three ponds — Verkh-Isetsky, Gorodskoy and Nizhne-Isetsky — were created on it. Yekaterinburg has traditionally been a city of mining and was once the center of the mining industry of the Urals and Siberia. Yekaterinburg remains a major center of the Russian armaments industry and is sometimes called the "Pittsburgh of Russia.". A few ornate, pastel mansions and wide boulevards are reminders of the tsarist era. The city is large enough that it has its own Metro system but is characterized mostly by blocky Soviet-era apartment buildings. The city has advanced under President Vladimir Putin and is now one of the fastest growing places in Russia, a country otherwise characterized by population declines

Yekaterinburg is technically an Asian city as it lies 32 kilometers east of the continental divide between Europe and Asia. The unofficial capital of the Urals, a key region in the Russian heartland, it is second only to Moscow in terms of industrial production and capital of Sverdlovsk oblast. Among the important industries are ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, machine building and metalworking, chemical and petrochemicals, construction materials and medical, light and food industries. On top of being home of numerous heavy industries and mining concerns, Yekaterinburg is also a major center for industrial research and development and power engineering as well as home to numerous institutes of higher education, technical training, and scientific research. In addition, Yekaterinburg is the largest railway junction in Russia: the Trans-Siberian Railway passes through it, the southern, northern, western and eastern routes merge in the city.

Accommodation: There are two good and affordable hotels — the 3-star Emerald and Parus hotels — located close to the city's most popular landmarks and main transport interchanges in the center of Yekaterinburg. Room prices start at RUB 1,800 per night.

History of Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723 by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine I. It was used by the tsars as a summer retreat but was mainly developed as metalworking and manufacturing center to take advantage of the large deposits of iron and other minerals in the Ural mountains. It is best known to Americans as the place where the last Tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and near where American U-2 spy plane, piloted by Gary Powers, was shot down in 1960.

Peter the Great recognized the importance of the iron and copper-rich Urals region for Imperial Russia's industrial and military development. In November 1723, he ordered the construction of a fortress factory and an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. In its early years Yekaterinburg grew rich from gold and other minerals and later coal. The Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745 created such a huge amount of wealth that one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. By the mid-18th century, metallurgical plants had sprung up across the Urals to cast cannons, swords, guns and other weapons to arm Russia’s expansionist ambitions. The Yekaterinburg mint produced most of Russia's coins. Explorations of the Trans-Baikal and Altai regions began here in the 18th century.

Iron, cast iron and copper were the main products. Even though Iron from the region went into the Eiffel Tower, the main plant in Yekaterinburg itself was shut down in 1808. The city still kept going through a mountain factory control system of the Urals. The first railway in the Urals was built here: in 1878, the Yekaterinburg-Perm railway branch connected the province's capital with the factories of the Middle Urals.

In the Soviet era the city was called Sverdlovsk (named after Yakov Sverdlov, the man who organized Nicholas II's execution). During the first five-year plans the city became industrial — old plants were reconstructed, new ones were built. The center of Yekaterinburg was formed to conform to the historical general plan of 1829 but was the layout was adjusted around plants and factories. In the Stalin era the city was a major gulag transhipment center. In World War II, many defense-related industries were moved here. It and the surrounding area were a center of the Soviet Union's military industrial complex. Soviet tanks, missiles and aircraft engines were made in the Urals. During the Cold War era, Yekaterinburg was a center of weapons-grade uranium enrichment and processing, warhead assembly and dismantlement. In 1979, 64 people died when anthrax leaked from a biological weapons facility. Yekaterinburg was a “Closed City” for 40 years during the Cold Soviet era and was not open to foreigners until 1991

In the early post-Soviet era, much like Pittsburgh in the 1970s, Yekaterinburg had a hard struggle d to cope with dramatic economic changes that have made its heavy industries uncompetitive on the world market. Huge defense plants struggled to survive and the city was notorious as an organized crime center in the 1990s, when its hometown boy Boris Yeltsin was President of Russia. By the 2000s, Yekaterinburg’s retail and service was taking off, the defense industry was reviving and it was attracting tech industries and investments related to the Urals’ natural resources. By the 2010s it was vying to host a world exhibition in 2020 (it lost, Dubai won) and it had McDonald’s, Subway, sushi restaurants, and Gucci, Chanel and Armani. There were Bentley and Ferrari dealerships but they closed down

Transportation in Yekaterinburg

Getting There: By Plane: Yekaterinburg is a three-hour flight from Moscow with prices starting at RUB 8,000, or a 3-hour flight from Saint Petersburg starting from RUB 9,422 (direct round-trip flight tickets for one adult passenger). There are also flights from Frankfurt, Istanbul, China and major cities in the former Soviet Union.

By Train: Yekaterinburg is a major stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Daily train service is available to Moscow and many other Russian cities.Yekaterinburg is a 32-hour train ride from Moscow (tickets RUB 8,380 and above) or a 36-hour train ride from Saint Petersburg (RUB 10,300 and above). The ticket prices are round trip for a berth in a sleeper compartment for one adult passenger). By Car: a car trip from Moscow to Yekateringburg is 1,787 kilometers long and takes about 18 hours. The road from Saint Petersburg is 2,294 kilometers and takes about 28 hours.

Regional Transport: The region's public transport includes buses and suburban electric trains. Regional trains provide transport to larger cities in the Ural region. Buses depart from Yekaterinburg’s two bus stations: the Southern Bus Station and the Northern Bus Station.

Regional Transport: According the to Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT): “Public transportation is well developed. Overcrowding is common. Fares are low. Service is efficient. Buses are the main form of public transport. Tram network is extensive. Fares are reasonable; service is regular. Trams are heavily used by residents, overcrowding is common. Purchase ticket after boarding. Metro runs from city center to Uralmash, an industrial area south of the city. Metro ends near the main railway station. Fares are inexpensive.

“Traffic is congested in city center. Getting around by car can be difficult. Route taxis (minivans) provide the fastest transport. They generally run on specific routes, but do not have specific stops. Drivers stop where passengers request. Route taxis can be hailed. Travel by bus or trolleybuses may be slow in rush hour. Trams are less affected by traffic jams. Trolley buses (electric buses) cannot run when temperatures drop below freezing.”

Entertainment, Sports and Recreation in Yekaterinburg

The performing arts in Yekaterinburg are first rate. The city has an excellent symphony orchestra, opera and ballet theater, and many other performing arts venues. Tickets are inexpensive. The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater is lavishly designed and richly decorated building in the city center of Yekaterinburg. The theater was established in 1912 and building was designed by architect Vladimir Semyonov and inspired by the Vienna Opera House and the Theater of Opera and Ballet in Odessa.

Vaynera Street is a pedestrian only shopping street in city center with restaurants, cafes and some bars. But otherwise Yekaterinburg's nightlife options are limited. There are a handful of expensive Western-style restaurants and bars, none of them that great. Nightclubs serve the city's nouveau riche clientele. Its casinos have closed down. Some of them had links with organized crime. New dance clubs have sprung up that are popular with Yekaterinburg's more affluent youth.

Yekaterinburg's most popular spectator sports are hockey, basketball, and soccer. There are stadiums and arenas that host all three that have fairly cheap tickets. There is an indoor water park and lots of parks and green spaces. The Urals have many lakes, forests and mountains are great for hiking, boating, berry and mushroom hunting, swimming and fishing. Winter sports include cross-country skiing and ice skating. Winter lasts about six months and there’s usually plenty of snow. The nearby Ural Mountains however are not very high and the downhill skiing opportunities are limited..

Sights in Yekaterinburg

Sights in Yekaterinburg include the Museum of City Architecture and Ural Industry, with an old water tower and mineral collection with emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and other precious stone; Geological Alley, a small park with labeled samples of minerals found in the Urals region; the Ural Geology Museum, which houses an extensive collection of stones, gold and gems from the Urals; a monument marking the border between Europe and Asia; a memorial for gulag victims; and a graveyard with outlandish memorials for slain mafia members.

The Military History Museum houses the remains of the U-2 spy plane shot down in 1960 and locally made tanks and rocket launchers. The fine arts museum contains paintings by some of Russia's 19th-century masters. Also worth a look are the History an Local Studies Museum; the Political History and Youth Museum; and the University and Arboretum. Old wooden houses can be seen around Zatoutstovsya ulitsa and ulitsa Belinskogo. Around the city are wooded parks, lakes and quarries used to harvest a variety of minerals. Weiner Street is the main street of Yekaterinburg. Along it are lovely sculptures and 19th century architecture. Take a walk around the unique Literary Quarter

Plotinka is a local meeting spot, where you will often find street musicians performing. Plotinka can be described as the center of the city's center. This is where Yekaterinburg holds its biggest events: festivals, seasonal fairs, regional holiday celebrations, carnivals and musical fountain shows. There are many museums and open-air exhibitions on Plotinka. Plotinka is named after an actual dam of the city pond located nearby (“plotinka” means “a small dam” in Russian).In November 1723, Peter the Great ordered the construction of an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. “Iset” can be translated from Finnish as “abundant with fish”. This name was given to the river by the Mansi — the Finno-Ugric people dwelling on the eastern slope of the Northern Urals.

Vysotsky and Iset are skyscrapers that are 188.3 meters and 209 meters high, respectively. Fifty-story-high Iset has been described by locals as the world’s northernmost skyscraper. Before the construction of Iset, Vysotsky was the tallest building of Yekaterinburg and Russia (excluding Moscow). A popular vote has decided to name the skyscraper after the famous Soviet songwriter, singer and actor Vladimir Vysotsky. and the building was opened on November 25, 2011. There is a lookout at the top of the building, and the Vysotsky museum on its second floor. The annual “Vysotsky climb” (1137 steps) is held there, with a prize of RUB 100,000. While Vysotsky serves as an office building, Iset, owned by the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, houses 225 premium residential apartments ranging from 80 to 490 square meters in size.

Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center

The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center (in the city center: ul. Yeltsina, 3) is a non-governmental organization named after the first president of the Russian Federation. The Museum of the First President of Russia as well as his archives are located in the Center. There is also a library, educational and children's centers, and exposition halls. Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career in Yekaterinburg. He was born in Butka about 200 kilometers east of Yekaterinburg.

The core of the Center is the Museum. Modern multimedia technologies help animate the documents, photos from the archives, and artifacts. The Yeltsin Museum holds collections of: propaganda posters, leaflets, and photos of the first years of the Soviet regime; portraits and portrait sculptures of members of Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of various years; U.S.S.R. government bonds and other items of the Soviet era; a copy of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, published in the “Novy Mir” magazine (#11, 1962); perestroika-era editions of books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and other authors; theater, concert, and cinema posters, programs, and tickets — in short, all of the artifacts of the perestroika era.

The Yeltsin Center opened in 2012. Inside you will also find an art gallery, a bookstore, a gift shop, a food court, concert stages and a theater. There are regular screenings of unique films that you will not find anywhere else. Also operating inside the center, is a scientific exploritorium for children. The center was designed by Boris Bernaskoni. Almost from the its very opening, the Yeltsin Center has been accused by members of different political entities of various ideological crimes. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00am to 9:00pm.

Where Nicholas II was Executed

On July, 17, 1918, during this reign of terror of the Russian Civil War, former-tsar Nicholas II, his wife, five children (the 13-year-old Alexis, 22-year-old Olga, 19-year-old Maria and 17-year-old Anastasia)the family physician, the cook, maid, and valet were shot to death by a Red Army firing squad in the cellar of the house they were staying at in Yekaterinburg.

Ipatiev House (near Church on the Blood, Ulitsa Libknekhta) was a merchant's house where Nicholas II and his family were executed. The house was demolished in 1977, on the orders of an up and coming communist politician named Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin later said that the destruction of the house was an "act of barbarism" and he had no choice because he had been ordered to do it by the Politburo,

The site is marked with s cross with the photos of the family members and cross bearing their names. A small wooden church was built at the site. It contains paintings of the family. For a while there were seven traditional wooden churches. Mass is given ay noon everyday in an open-air museum. The Church on the Blood — constructed to honor Nicholas II and his family — was built on the part of the site in 1991 and is now a major place of pilgrimage.

Nicholas and his family where killed during the Russian civil war. It is thought the Bolsheviks figured that Nicholas and his family gave the Whites figureheads to rally around and they were better of dead. Even though the death orders were signed Yakov Sverdlov, the assassination was personally ordered by Lenin, who wanted to get them out of sight and out of mind. Trotsky suggested a trial. Lenin nixed the idea, deciding something had to be done about the Romanovs before White troops approached Yekaterinburg. Trotsky later wrote: "The decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of he punishment showed everyone that we would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing."

Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker: “Having read a lot about the end of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and servants, I wanted to see the place in Yekaterinburg where that event occurred. The gloomy quality of this quest depressed Sergei’s spirits, but he drove all over Yekaterinburg searching for the site nonetheless. Whenever he stopped and asked a pedestrian how to get to the house where Nicholas II was murdered, the reaction was a wince. Several people simply walked away. But eventually, after a lot of asking, Sergei found the location. It was on a low ridge near the edge of town, above railroad tracks and the Iset River. The house, known as the Ipatiev House, was no longer standing, and the basement where the actual killings happened had been filled in. I found the blankness of the place sinister and dizzying. It reminded me of an erasure done so determinedly that it had worn a hole through the page. [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 3, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010)]

“The street next to the site is called Karl Liebknecht Street. A building near where the house used to be had a large green advertisement that said, in English, “LG—Digitally Yours.” On an adjoining lot, a small chapel kept the memory of the Tsar and his family; beneath a pedestal holding an Orthodox cross, peonies and pansies grew. The inscription on the pedestal read, “We go down on our knees, Russia, at the foot of the tsarist cross.”

Books: The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie (Random House, 1995); The Fall of the Romanovs by Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir Khrustalëv (Yale, 1995);

See Separate Article END OF NICHOLAS II factsanddetails.com

Execution of Nicholas II

According to Robert Massie K. Massie, author of Nicholas and Alexandra, Nicholas II and his family were awakened from their bedrooms around midnight and taken to the basement. They were told they were to going to take some photographs of them and were told to stand behind a row of chairs.

Suddenly, a group of 11 Russians and Latvians, each with a revolver, burst into the room with orders to kill a specific person. Yakob Yurovsky, a member of the Soviet executive committee, reportedly shouted "your relatives are continuing to attack the Soviet Union.” After firing, bullets bouncing off gemstones hidden in the corsets of Alexandra and her daughters ricocheted around the room like "a shower of hail," the soldiers said. Those that were still breathing were killed with point black shots to the head.

The three sisters and the maid survived the first round thanks to their gems. They were pressed up against a wall and killed with a second round of bullets. The maid was the only one that survived. She was pursued by the executioners who stabbed her more than 30 times with their bayonets. The still writhing body of Alexis was made still by a kick to the head and two bullets in the ear delivered by Yurovsky himself.

Yurovsky wrote: "When the party entered I told the Romanovs that in view of the fact their relatives continued their offensive against Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Urals Soviet had decided to shoot them. Nicholas turned his back to the detachment and faced his family. Then, as if collecting himself, he turned around, asking, 'What? What?'"

"[I] ordered the detachment to prepare. Its members had been previously instructed whom to shoot and to am directly at the heart to avoid much blood and to end more quickly. Nicholas said no more. he turned again to his family. The others shouted some incoherent exclamations. All this lasted a few seconds. Then commenced the shooting, which went on for two or three minutes. [I] killed Nicholas on the spot."

Nicholas II’s Initial Burial Site in Yekaterinburg

Ganina Yama Monastery (near the village of Koptyaki, 15 kilometers northwest of Yekaterinburg) stands near the three-meter-deep pit where some the remains of Nicholas II and his family were initially buried. The second burial site — where most of the remains were — is in a field known as Porosyonkov (56.9113628°N 60.4954326°E), seven kilometers from Ganina Yama.

On visiting Ganina Yama Monastery, one person posted in Trip Advisor: “We visited this set of churches in a pretty park with Konstantin from Ekaterinburg Guide Centre. He really brought it to life with his extensive knowledge of the history of the events surrounding their terrible end. The story is so moving so unless you speak Russian, it is best to come here with a guide or else you will have no idea of what is what.”

In 1991, the acid-burned remains of Nicholas II and his family were exhumed from a shallow roadside mass grave in a swampy area 12 miles northwest of Yekaterinburg. The remains had been found in 1979 by geologist and amateur archeologist Alexander Avdonin, who kept the location secret out of fear that they would be destroyed by Soviet authorities. The location was disclosed to a magazine by one his fellow discovers.

The original plan was to throw the Romanovs down a mine shaft and disposes of their remains with acid. They were thrown in a mine with some grenades but the mine didn't collapse. They were then carried by horse cart. The vats of acid fell off and broke. When the carriage carrying the bodies broke down it was decided the bury the bodies then and there. The remaining acid was poured on the bones, but most of it was soaked up the ground and the bones largely survived.

After this their pulses were then checked, their faces were crushed to make them unrecognizable and the bodies were wrapped in bed sheets loaded onto a truck. The "whole procedure," Yurovsky said took 20 minutes. One soldiers later bragged than he could "die in peace because he had squeezed the Empress's -------."

The bodies were taken to a forest and stripped, burned with acid and gasoline, and thrown into abandoned mine shafts and buried under railroad ties near a country road near the village of Koptyaki. "The bodies were put in the hole," Yurovsky wrote, "and the faces and all the bodies, generally doused with sulfuric acid, both so they couldn't be recognized and prevent a stink from them rotting...We scattered it with branches and lime, put boards on top and drove over it several times—no traces of the hole remained.

Shortly afterwards, the government in Moscow announced that Nicholas II had been shot because of "a counterrevolutionary conspiracy." There was no immediate word on the other members of the family which gave rise to rumors that other members of the family had escaped. Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlov in honor of the man who signed the death orders.

For seven years the remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra, three of their daughters and four servants were stored in polyethylene bags on shelves in the old criminal morgue in Yekaterunburg. On July 17, 1998, Nicholas II and his family and servants who were murdered with him were buried Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg along with the other Romanov tsars, who have been buried there starting with Peter the Great. Nicholas II had a side chapel built for himself at the fortress in 1913 but was buried in a new crypt.

Near Yekaterinburg

Factory-Museum of Iron and Steel Metallurgy (in Niznhy Tagil 80 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg) a museum with old mining equipment made at the site of huge abandoned iron and steel factory. Officially known as the Factory-Museum of the History of the Development of Iron and Steel Metallurgy, it covers an area of 30 hectares and contains a factory founded by the Demidov family in 1725 that specialized mainly in the production of high-quality cast iron and steel. Later, the foundry was renamed after Valerian Kuybyshev, a prominent figure of the Communist Party.

The first Russian factory museum, the unusual museum demonstrates all stages of metallurgy and metal working. There is even a blast furnace and an open-hearth furnace. The display of factory equipment includes bridge crane from 1892) and rolling stock equipment from the 19th-20th centuries. In Niznhy Tagil contains some huge blocks of malachite and

Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha (180 kilometers east-northeast of Yekaterinburg) has an open air architecture museum with log buildings, a stone church and other pre-revolutionary architecture. The village is the creation of Ivan Samoilov, a local activist who loved his village so much he dedicated 40 years of his life to recreating it as the open-air museum of wooden architecture.

The stone Savior Church, a good example of Siberian baroque architecture. The interior and exterior of the church are exhibition spaces of design. The houses are very colorful. In tsarist times, rich villagers hired serfs to paint the walls of their wooden izbas (houses) bright colors. Old neglected buildings from the 17th to 19th centuries have been brought to Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha from all over the Urals. You will see the interior design of the houses and hear stories about traditions and customs of the Ural farmers.

Verkhoturye (330 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg) is the home a 400-year-old monastery that served as 16th century capital of the Urals. Verkhoturye is a small town on the Tura River knows as the Jerusalem of the Urals for its many holy places, churches and monasteries. The town's main landmark is its Kremlin — the smallest in Russia. Pilgrims visit the St. Nicholas Monastery to see the remains of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, the patron saint of fishermen.

Ural Mountains

Ural Mountains are the traditional dividing line between Europe and Asia and have been a crossroads of Russian history. Stretching from Kazakhstan to the fringes of the Arctic Kara Sea, the Urals lie almost exactly along the 60 degree meridian of longitude and extend for about 2,000 kilometers (1,300 miles) from north to south and varies in width from about 50 kilometers (30 miles) in the north and 160 kilometers (100 miles) the south. At kilometers 1777 on the Trans-Siberian Railway there is white obelisk with "Europe" carved in Russian on one side and "Asia" carved on the other.

The eastern side of the Urals contains a lot of granite and igneous rock. The western side is primarily sandstone and limestones. A number of precious stones can be found in the southern part of the Urals, including emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and aquamarines. The highest peaks are in the north. Mount Narodnaya is the highest of all but is only 1884 meters (6,184 feet) high. The northern Urals are covered in thick forests and home to relatively few people.

Like the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, the Urals are very old mountains — with rocks and sediments that are hundreds of millions years old — that were one much taller than they are now and have been steadily eroded down over millions of years by weather and other natural processes to their current size. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “The rock composition helps shape the topography: the high ranges and low, broad-topped ridges consist of quartzites, schists, and gabbro, all weather-resistant. Buttes are frequent, and there are north–south troughs of limestone, nearly all containing river valleys. Karst topography is highly developed on the western slopes of the Urals, with many caves, basins, and underground streams. The eastern slopes, on the other hand, have fewer karst formations; instead, rocky outliers rise above the flattened surfaces. Broad foothills, reduced to peneplain, adjoin the Central and Southern Urals on the east.

“The Urals date from the structural upheavals of the Hercynian orogeny (about 250 million years ago). About 280 million years ago there arose a high mountainous region, which was eroded to a peneplain. Alpine folding resulted in new mountains, the most marked upheaval being that of the Nether-Polar Urals...The western slope of the Urals is composed of middle Paleozoic sedimentary rocks (sandstones and limestones) that are about 350 million years old. In many places it descends in terraces to the Cis-Ural depression (west of the Urals), to which much of the eroded matter was carried during the late Paleozoic (about 300 million years ago). Found there are widespread karst (a starkly eroded limestone region) and gypsum, with large caverns and subterranean streams. On the eastern slope, volcanic layers alternate with sedimentary strata, all dating from middle Paleozoic times.”

Southern Urals

The southern Urals are characterized by grassy slopes and fertile valleys. The middle Urals are a rolling platform that barely rises above 300 meters (1,000 feet). This region is rich in minerals and has been heavily industrialized. This is where you can find Yekaterinburg (formally Sverdlovsk), the largest city in the Urals.

Most of the Southern Urals are is covered with forests, with 50 percent of that pine-woods, 44 percent birch woods, and the rest are deciduous aspen and alder forests. In the north, typical taiga forests are the norm. There are patches of herbal-poaceous steppes, northem sphagnous marshes and bushy steppes, light birch forests and shady riparian forests, tall-grass mountainous meadows, lowland ling marshes and stony placers with lichen stains. In some places there are no large areas of homogeneous forests, rather they are forests with numerous glades and meadows of different size.

In the Ilmensky Mountains Reserve in the Southern Urals, scientists counted 927 vascular plants (50 relicts, 23 endemic species), about 140 moss species, 483 algae species and 566 mushroom species. Among the species included into the Red Book of Russia are feather grass, downy-leaved feather grass, Zalessky feather grass, moccasin flower, ladies'-slipper, neottianthe cucullata, Baltic orchis, fen orchis, helmeted orchis, dark-winged orchis, Gelma sandwart, Krasheninnikov sandwart, Clare astragalus.

The fauna of the vertebrate animals in the Reserve includes 19 fish, 5 amphibian and 5 reptile. Among the 48 mammal species are elks, roe deer, boars, foxes, wolves, lynxes, badgers, common weasels, least weasels, forest ferrets, Siberian striped weasel, common marten, American mink. Squirrels, beavers, muskrats, hares, dibblers, moles, hedgehogs, voles are quite common, as well as chiropterans: pond bat, water bat, Brandt's bat, whiskered bat, northern bat, long-eared bat, parti-coloured bat, Nathusius' pipistrelle. The 174 bird bird species include white-tailed eagles, honey hawks, boreal owls, gnome owls, hawk owls, tawny owls, common scoters, cuckoos, wookcocks, common grouses, wood grouses, hazel grouses, common partridges, shrikes, goldenmountain thrushes, black- throated loons and others.

Activities and Places in the Ural Mountains

The Urals possess beautiful natural scenery that can be accessed from Yekaterinburg with a rent-a-car, hired taxi and tour. Travel agencies arrange rafting, kayaking and hiking trips. Hikes are available in the taiga forest and the Urals. Trips often include walks through the taiga to small lakes and hikes into the mountains and excursions to collect mushrooms and berries and climb in underground caves. Mellow rafting is offered in a relatively calm six kilometer section of the River Serga. In the winter visitor can enjoy cross-mountains skiing, downhill skiing, ice fishing, dog sledding, snow-shoeing and winter hiking through the forest to a cave covered with ice crystals.

Lake Shartash (10 kilometers from Yekaterinburg) is where the first Ural gold was found, setting in motion the Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745, which created so much wealth one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. The area around Shartash Lake is a favorite picnic and barbecue spot of the locals. Getting There: by bus route No. 50, 054 or 54, with a transfer to suburban commuter bus route No. 112, 120 or 121 (the whole trip takes about an hour), or by car (10 kilometers drive from the city center, 40 minutes).

Revun Rapids (90 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg near Beklenishcheva village) is a popular white water rafting places On the nearby cliffs you can see the remains of a mysterious petroglyph from the Paleolithic period. Along the steep banks, you may notice the dark entrance of Smolinskaya Cave. There are legends of a sorceress who lived in there. The rocks at the riverside are suited for competitive rock climbers and beginners. Climbing hooks and rings are hammered into rocks. The most fun rafting is generally in May and June.

Olenii Ruchii National Park (100 kilometers west of Yekaterinburg) is the most popular nature park in Sverdlovsk Oblast and popular weekend getaway for Yekaterinburg residents. Visitors are attracted by the beautiful forests, the crystal clear Serga River and picturesque rocks caves. There are some easy hiking routes: the six-kilometer Lesser Ring and the 15-kilometer Greater Ring. Another route extends for 18 km and passes by the Mitkinsky Mine, which operated in the 18th-19th centuries. It's a kind of an open-air museum — you can still view mining an enrichment equipment here. There is also a genuine beaver dam nearby.

Among the other attractions at Olenii Ruchii are Druzhba (Friendship) Cave, with passages that extend for about 500 meters; Dyrovaty Kamen (Holed Stone), created over time by water of Serga River eroding rock; and Utoplennik (Drowned Man), where you can see “The Angel of Sole Hope”., created by the Swedish artist Lehna Edwall, who has placed seven angels figures in different parts of the world to “embrace the planet, protecting it from fear, despair, and disasters.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Federal Agency for Tourism of the Russian Federation (official Russia tourism website russiatourism.ru ), Russian government websites, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Lonely Planet guides, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Yomiuri Shimbun and various books and other publications.

Updated in September 2020

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The Sverdlovsk Region territorially covers practically the entire Middle Urals and part of the Northern Urals . The region is usually associated with the Urals in general, and the city of Yekaterinburg, its administrative centre, is called the capital of the Urals . This city is also the centre of the Urals Federal District.

Flora and Fauna

Water resources, landmarks and tourism, konzhakov stone, serebryansky kamen (stone), denezhkin stone & the kvarkush range, kachkanar mountain, the peter the gronsky aka petrogrom rocks, the devil's fortress, the seven brothers rocks, mount bunar, the urals mars, reserves, national and natural parks, picturesque rivers, the revun rapids, zoo nurseries, major cities, yekaterinburg.

In earlier times, the region was part of the Siberian province, then part of the Trans-Ural region of the Perm province of the Russian Empire. As an administrative unit, the Sverdlovsk Region was separated from the Urals Region in 1934 and finally appeared on the maps as an independent entity. It received its name from the regional centre – the city of Sverdlovsk, which is actually Yekaterinburg, but the city was renamed in the Soviet times to commemorate the revolutionary Yakov Sverdlov. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the city was given back its historical name – Yekaterinburg, but the region was not renamed, thus the discrepancy. The same story happened with Saint Petersburg and Leningradskaya Region.

The Sverdlovsk Region borders the Komi Republic and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Region in the north, the Tyumen Region in the east, the Kurgan and Chelyabinsk Regions in the south, the Republic of Bashkortostan and the Perm Territory in the west.

There is a conditional border between Europe and Asia running from north to south through the whole Sverdlovsk Region. The area of the region is 194 307 sq. km., the length from north to south is 660 km, the distance between the western and eastern extremes is about 560 km. The population of the region is 4.3 million people. There are 47 cities in the Sverdlovsk Region.

The relief of the region is diverse. The western part is mountainous, whereas the central and eastern parts are plain. The Main Urals Range extends from north to south. The highest point in the Sverdlovsk Region is Konzhakov Stone (1,569 m).

The vegetation is dominated by coniferous and mixed forests, mainly birch, pine, spruce, less often aspen and cedar, while in the extreme south-east there are some forest-steppes. Forests cover about 82.3% of the territory. Mountain slopes up to 600 m high are covered with dark coniferous northern taiga forests (spruce, fir, cedar). The mountains, passes, plateaus starting from the height of 800 m and higher are covered with rocky tundra.

The fauna of the Sverdlovsk Region is filled with typical forest representatives. There are 66 species of mammals, 6 species of reptiles, 9 species of amphibians, 228 species of birds, and 48 species of fish.

The watershed between the basins of the main tributaries of Russia's two largest rivers, the Irtysh and the Kama, runs along the ridges of the Ural Mountains and the eastern foothills in the south of the Sverdlovsk Region. The region's river network includes 18,414 rivers with a total length of more than 68,000 km. They are characterized by mixed feeding (by ground and meltwater, and atmospheric precipitation) with a predominance of snow (snow feeding is about 85-90% in the southern areas of the region and about 60-65% in the Ural Mountains ). The rivers freeze in late October-November and open up in April. The main river in the Irtysh basin is the Tobol with its tributaries of the first, second and third-order: the Iset, Tavda, and Tura (tributaries of the Tobol); the Nitsa, Pyshma, Tagil (tributaries of the Tura); the Lozva, Sosva, and Pelym (tributaries of the Tavda). The main rivers in the Kama basin are the Chusovaya River (a tributary of the Kama River) and its tributary – the Sylva River, and the Ufa River (a tributary of the Belaya River).

Swamps and marshlands occupy about 10.53% of the total area of the region (20461 sq. km.). The largest marshes are located in the north-east, in the Tavda river basin.

The Sverdlovsk Region has more than 5,850 lakes and artificial water bodies with the total area of about 1.35 thousand sq.km., including about 2000 lakes with the area of more than 0.01 sq.km, as well as a number of even smaller lakes (according to the Institute of Lake Science of the Russian Academy of Sciences).

The largest lakes in the region are the Pelymsky Tuman (its area is 65 sq.km) and the Vagilskiy Tuman (half the size of its bigger brother, it is 31.2 sq.km.). The largest artificial lakes are the Beloyarskoye reservoir on the Pyshma River and the Volchikhinskoye reservoir on the Chusovaya River. The Sverdlovsk Region takes the last place by the total area of lakes and artificial reservoirs, as well as by lakes among the regions of the Ural Federal District. The size and number of lakes, artificial reservoirs, swamps and wetlands is unstable and tends to change depending on natural factors such as water regime, climatic phenomena, swamping, etc. and anthropogenic factors, viz. excessive drainage or, conversely, watering of territories, regulation of river flows, etc.

Underground water reservoirs are also powerful and aplenty in the Sverdlovsk region which ranks the third in terms of the volume of forecasted groundwater resources (after the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area and the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area).

The climate of this area is moderately continental. The Ural Mountains partially protect the region from cyclones and anticyclones. Strong winds and snowstorms are quite rare. As we move away from the Main Ural Mountain Range and towards the south of the region, the air temperature increases and the amount of annual precipitation decreases. But on the whole, despite the large territory of the region, climatic conditions in all parts are quite similar. Seasons are well-pronounced, and precipitation is evenly distributed throughout the calendar year. Summer is warm, characterized by moderately hot weather without any extremes. The warmest month is July, with an average daily temperature of +21 to +26°C (+70 to +79 F), and in the mountains, it is only +14 to +16°C (+57 to +61 F). If you get very warm and dry air from Kazakhstan and Central Asia at this time of year, the daytime temperature can reach +35 to +40 ° C (+95 to +104 F), whereas the invasion of the Arctic air can bring some frosts at night frosts. Winter is freezing cold with dense snow cover. January is the coldest month of the year, with average daily temperatures ranging from -14 to -20°C (+7 to -4 F). However, during the Arctic cold air onslaughts, there are severe frosts down to -48 to -50 °C (-54 to -58 F), and in the northern parts of the region down to -55 °C (-67F). Thaws are also possible when the day temperature rises to +8°C (+46 F) in winter, but this is very rare.

The Sverdlovsk Region is one of the largest industrial centres in the country due to extensive mining. In terms of industrial output, it ranks second in Russia after the Moscow Region. There are rich deposits of bauxite, gold, various minerals, platinum and asbestos. The territory is blessed with many deposits of precious and semiprecious stones, they are mainly located in the so-called ‘gem strip’ running on the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains .

There are many interesting places in the Sverdlovsk Region that attract travellers. In 2017, it was included in the top 10 most popular tourist regions of Russia. This area is especially suitable for aficionados of active rest.

Beautiful and majestic mountains attract herds of tourists in summer and winter alike. You can go hiking, skiing or drive snowmobiles here. The highest of the mountains are in the north of the Sverdlovsk region together with the main peak Konzhakov Stone (1,569 m). Tourists sometimes call the mountain Konzhak. The mountain is 450 km north of the city of Yekaterinburg. There is no cellular communication, but you can spend the night in a tent. Every year on the first Saturday of July, on the slopes of this mountain massif there is held an International Mountain Marathon Konzhak. It is a challenging 42-km distance running along the mountain trails and rock rivers of Konzhakov Stone , over the rivers and snows fields. The run goes from the river Konzhakovka to the top of the mountain and back.

Next to Konzhakov Stone , in its eastern spur, there is Serebryansky Kamen Mountain (also called Serebryanka). The mountain is almost 300 m lower, but it is as frequently visited as Konzhak. The top of the mountain is crowned with huge and steep rock bastions. Its spurs are like the spine of a dragon. In winter, the mountain is often compared to the kingdom of the Snow Queen, so everything here is majestic and impregnable (rocks, ice and snow). On the slope of the mountain in the olden days there used to be a rescue base, the only remnant of that is a sauna. If necessary, you can stay there for a sleepover (it accommodates 3-4 people). The nearest connection with the Ministry of Emergency Situations is at the tourist base Serebryansky Kamen at the intersection of the highway Karpinsk-Kytlym with the river Serebryanka. Here you can spend the night, visit the bathhouse, there is a parking lot as well.

Other high mountain ranges include the Main Urals Range , the nearby Denezhkin Stone Range and the Kvarkush Range. Between the Main Ural Ridge and Denezhkin Stone Mountain there is the Zvezda camping site. There are also no cellular communications or regular transport links in the area. On the Kvarkush Range you can visit the Zhigalan Falls, a five-stage waterfall which is considered one of the most beautiful waterfalls in the Urals . By the end of autumn, the waterfall freezes, which attracts fans of ice climbing.

In the central and southern parts of the region, the mountains are low but easily accessible and no less beautiful. Among them are Mounts Kachkanar , Volchikha , Shunut , Sinyaya (Blue) , Azov-Mountain , and the Merry Mountains.

Kachkanar mountain is 270 km away from Yekaterinburg by the Serov road. It is a ridge with two peaks – Great Kachkanar (878 m) and Little Kachkanar (866 m). It is better to start climbing from the top of Mt Malaya. There was founded a monastery called Shad Tchup Ling (Place of practice and realization) on the northeast spur of this mountain in 1995 by Lama Sanje Tenzin Dokshitom (Mikhail Sannikov). When you come up to the beginning of the log path to the monastery, you are invited to take a brick with you up to the monastery so that your path would cease to be some common walking, but will gain the meaning. The bricks are needed for the construction of the site which is still underway today. There are several monks living on the mountain at any time of year. The guests are welcomed by the Awakening stupa. A stupa is a Buddhist commemorative monument usually housing sacred relics associated with the Buddha or other saintly persons. Another stupa is hidden in the rocks from prying eyes. Anyone can come to the monastery as a guest with an overnight stay or as a volunteer worker. From the monastery, the trail continues to Camel Rock, from where you can enjoy views of the town of Kachkanar and the huge steps of the Kachkanar Mining and Processing quarry (EVRAZ KGOK, formerly called KGOK Vanadiy, an iron ore producer). A small lake formed by flooding a quarry is located 500 m from the beginning of the trail to the monastery. From here, bypassing the monastery, there is another road to Camel Rock.

If you are pressed for time, within the city limits of Yekaterinburg there are beautiful rocks with bizarre forms, the most famous of them are the rocks of Peter Gronsky (aka Petrogrom or Grony), the Devil's Fortress, and the Seven Brothers. Tourists admire their beautiful views, and climbers train here to conquer the rocks of varying difficulty.

The rocks of Peter the Gronsky are stone remains on top of the Upper Iset granite massif (370 m high). The height of the rocks themselves is 15 m. They have several names. On the maps, they are called the rocks of Peter the Gronsky . In the Soviet times, it was believed that revolutionary workers headed by Peter Gronsky hid their weapons here and held mausoleums. However, local historians believe that Peter Gronsky, who lived at the Iset railway station in those years, could not participate in the revolutionary events, because he was still very young. Scientists call the rocks Petrogrom, in honour of Peter the Thunderer. They say that lightning strikes here very often. And among the tourists, there's a simpler name – Grony aka Thunderstorms. According to archaeological excavations, in ancient times there was a metallurgical production here, the ore was supplied here from the Sugra mine. Nowadays, it is a popular weekend route oftentimes taken with children at any time of year. From the rocks, there is a picturesque view of Lake Iset. The Petrogrom Rocks are located to the north-west of Yekaterinburg. You can get to them by public transport: by train to Nizhny Tagil, go 479 km to the station. The trail to the rocks starts on the right of the stop. A visit to the Petrogrom Rocks can be combined with a trip to the rocks of the Devil's Fortress and Iset Lake.

The Devil's Fortress is both a mountain (the absolute height is 347 m) and a rocky massif on its top. The rocks are a mighty granite ridge with a height of 20 m having a folded structure. As for the name, one version of the place was "damned or devilish" because if you look at such an erratic heap of granite slabs them seem so unnatural as if laid out by an evil force. In the process of excavations, there were found traces of ancient people staying here. Probably the first locals made sacrifices here to appease the gods. Mass visitation to the Devil's Fortress began at the end of 19th century after the Ural railway was opened. In 1980-1985, this place was closed to visitors. During this time the territory was cleared, garbage was taken out and the area was equipped with a climbing wall, one of the first in the USSR. For climbers, the northern side of the remains is of the greatest interest. The southern side is more gentle and goes down as if in steps to the valley of the Semipalatka river, a tributary of the Iset River. A wooden staircase leads to the very top of the Devil's Fortress. You can visit the Devil's Fortress by taking a train from Yekaterinburg to Iset station, the rocks are 6 km from this station.

The Seven Brothers Rocks, one of the most popular rock idols in the Middle Urals , are the highest rocks in the vicinity of Yekaterinburg. They are located at the top of Mount Semibratskaya (422 m) and belong to the Upper Iset granite massif. The height of the idols is up to 32 m. In the upper part, the mount is dividing into separate stone columns of folded structure, reminiscent of giants or brothers, from which the name comes. Actually, there are more than seven ‘brothers’, and next to them there is a remnant called ‘a sister’. There are many legends associated with the name of the rocks, and most of them imply that the brothers turned into stone. No traces of ancient people were found here. It could be connected with the prohibition for ordinary people to visit this place because it was believed that gods lived there. Nowadays there are a lot of tourists here, climbers have the training and sometimes competitions. Nearby (1.5 km) are the Rocks of Three Sisters. There are indeed three stone idols of no more than 20 m high. It is easy to climb to the south side. On the north side, there is an interesting big grotto. You can get to the Seven Brothers from the town of Verkh-Neyvinsk (7 km) and to the village itself take a train from Yekaterinburg.

Mount Bunar (612 m), which is the highest in the vicinity of Verkh-Neyvinsk and Novouralsk, has the Bunar idols. There are no idols on the top itself, they are scattered all over the slopes of Mount Bunar . It is not easy to find them among the dense taiga filled with windbreak. There is a belief that there are 999 idols in these forests. You climb one of them, you open your eyes to the next one. By the way, real idols which were worshipped by the peoples who lived here in ancient times must remain hidden from curious eyes. Most of the tourists manage to find two rock sculptures which are called very dramatically: the First and the Second. Not far from Mount Bunar , there are mineral deposits. To the south of Mount Bunar on the Kamenka River, there is one of the few deposits of green garnet in the Urals - a diamond-like demantoid. In the east, in the environs of the former mountain, there is now the Zaplotny Stone quarry where they mine tourmalines, chlorites, sphenes, and radiated zeolite. It is better to start the trip to Mount Bunar from Belorechka settlement or from the railway station Neivo-Rudyanskaya.

The relief of the Urals Mountains made it possible to build many ski centres in the Sverdlovsk Oblast. The largest of them are located on Belaya, Volchikha, and Yezhovaya mountains. In the city of Nizhny Tagil on Mount Dolganaya there is a ski jump complex where international competitions are held.

In the Sverdlovsk Region, you can see ethereal landscapes which the locals call the Urals Mars. Unusual beautiful landscapes reminiscent of Martian and sometimes lunar ones appeared on the place of former clay quarries. The official name of this place is Poldnevoy Section of the Troitsko-Baynovsky refractory clay deposit located south of the town of Bogdanovich, near the Poldnevoy village. The deposit is 20 km long and has an area of about 75 sq.km. It is one of the largest reserves in the Middle Urals. The clays have different colouring ranging from white and light grey to black with admixtures of iron oxides and humus matter. Due to this, the local clay quarries differ considerably in colour from each other. Clay hills have the appearance of ridges of different sizes. There are several lakes with water of orange and brown-red colour which is explained by the presence of pyrite in water. Bathing in such water is dangerous. Walking in this area can be likened to walking on another planet.

Thanks to karst phenomena, there are many caves, gaps, sinks, arches and other karst formations in the mountains. However, the exploration of grottoes and caves continues to this day and even geographers make very tentative guesses about their numbers. There are about 80 caves in the Sverdlovsk Region that are more than 50 meters long and deeper than two meters.

The longest caves are the Severnaya Cave (2,250 m long), the Bolshaya Yurtishenskaya Cave (930 m long), the Tayozhnaya Cave (850 m long), the Smolinskaya Cave (630 m long), and the Druzhba Cave (500 m long).

The deepest caves are the Sadykovskaya (88 m), the Tayozhnaya (64 m), the Saranskaya (49 m), the Vetrovaya (45 m), and the Volkovskaya Mine (44 m).

The most popular caves in the Sverdlovsk Region are the Smolinskaya, Druzhba, and the Arakayevskie caves. The Smolinskaya Cave is located two kilometres from the village of Beklenishcheva in the Sukholozhskoye District. The Druzhba Cave is located near the Iset River and the Revun rapids. The Arakayevskie caves can be found near the village of Arakayevo in the Deer Streams Nature Park.

The Sverdlovsk region has many interesting places to visit:

• Nature reserves Denezhkin Stone , Visimsky
• Nature parks Deer Streams , Chusovaya River, Bazhov’s Places;
• National Park Pripyshminskie Pinewoods
• Nature and mineralogical reserve Rezhevskaya

Fans of water trips will be interested in rafting along the picturesque rivers Chusovaya, Sosva, Lozva, Serga, Iset, Rezh, Kakva, Ivdel, Tagil, Ufa, Neiva, Pyshma, Shishim, Serebryanka, Sulem, Ay, and Bardym. The most stunning of them is the Chusovaya River. On the banks of many rivers, there are plenty of beautiful rocks of various shapes and sizes.

For the lovers of extreme pleasures, the Revun rapids on the Iset River are the biggest temptation. The Iset River is a calm, not a mountain river but for 500 m it turns into a bubbling stream and shows a duel of water and stone. The complexity category of the rapids varies depending on the season and water level in the river from the 2nd to the 5th at the end of March or in April during the flood. It is often possible to watch rafters' competitions or training sessions in canoes, catamarans, kayaks on the Revun rapids. Beklenishchevskie rocks (20-30 m high) surrounding the rapids lure all types of climbers, experienced and beginners alike. In 1989, the last All-Union Tourist Con was held here. In the vicinity of Revun, just 1.5 km away, there is the Smolinskaya cave (500 km downstream, on the opposite bank and 800 m deep into the forest to be exact), which can be visited after rafting.

The following zoo nurseries are located in the Sverdlovsk Region:

• Maral farm Visimskiye Zori. Marals are large semi-wild deer brought here from the Altai. It is situated in Visim settlement, 180 km from Yekaterinburg.
• Zoo in Pridannikovo village, 200 km from Yekaterinburg.
• Irbit ostrich farm in the town of Irbit, 205 km from Yekaterinburg.
• The equestrian sports club Kapriol which keeps horses, reindeer, and white camel. You can order a tour, or go for a walk to the Seven Brothers Rocks. The club teaches horseback riding. It is located in Verkh-Neyvinsky, 70 km from Yekaterinburg.
• Deer reserve UZGA. It is situated not far from Itkul, near Sysertskoye Lake, 116 km from Yekaterinburg.
• Kholzan bird of prey nursery near the village of Kashino, 46 km from Yekaterinburg.

Those who want food for thought and a calmer but no less interesting experience should go to the major cities of the Sverdlovsk region where you can visit their temples and monasteries, museums, and get acquainted with local culture and traditions.

The main pearl among the cities of the Sverdlovsk region is its capital city – Yekaterinburg. You can get to Yekaterinburg in one of the following ways:

• Fly by plane to Koltsovo Airport.
• Take a train to the station of Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk-Sortirovochnaya station).

You can take a bus, suburban train or a taxi to other towns of the region from Yekaterinburg.

By order of Peter the Great, the city of Yekaterinburg, also spelt as Ekaterinburg, was originally established in the Urals as an industrial and trade centre. In 1723, the Yekaterinburg plant was built on the Iset River. This year is also considered the birthday of the city. Its founders are Vasily Tatishchev and Georg Wilhelm de Gennin. The city received its name in honour of the wife of Peter I, the future Empress Catherine I. The city has a favourable geographical location. Yekaterinburg is located on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains , in the Middle Urals. The Ural Mountains in this place are low, they are basically hills, which provides favourable conditions for the construction of railways and large roads here. The Koltsovo International Airport is also located here. Now Yekaterinburg is one of the largest transport and logistics hubs. The city has many shopping and office centres. Yekaterinburg is the most compact city with a population of one million people in Russia. Its area is 490 sq. km. In terms of population (about 1.5 million people) it is the fourth city in Russia after Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Novosibirsk. The main river of the city is the Iset. There are also ponds within the city limits: the Urban, the Upper Iset, and the Lower Iset ponds. All the tributaries of the Iset in the city except the Patrushikha River were hidden underground in the past years. Yekaterinburg is the only city in the Urals with metro, and for a long time, it was considered the shortest in the world.

It is convenient to start a brief acquaintance with the history of the capital of the Urals with the Plotinka - the dam of the city pond that gave rise to the plant and the city of Yekaterinburg itself. A stone's throw from it, there is a monument to the founders of the city (Tatishchev and de Gennin), a chapel in honour of Catherine I and a fountain called the Stone Flower. In addition to the dam and the pond, you can visit the exhibition of large-size equipment of Ural factories in the open air. A walk along the embankment of the city pond and along the Iset River in the centre of the city will open views of the old buildings preserved here. In summer, you can take a boat ride on the pond.

Another attraction is the Temple on Blood built on the site of the Ipatyev’s house. It is believed that during the Civil War in 1918 in the basement of Ipatyev's house the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his family were executed. The cathedral was built in the Russian-Byzantine style and divided into the Lower and Upper Temples. There are a firing room and a small museum in the tomb chapel of the Lower Temple.

Across the road from the Temple on Blood, on Voznesenskaya Hill, there is a palace and a park which is sometimes called the Yekaterinburg Acropolis. The estate of the Ural Kharitonov-Rastorguyev dynasty includes a park with an artificial pond and a gazebo-rotunda on it.

To get acquainted with the panorama of the city, it is worth visiting the observation deck of the skyscraper Vysotsky (the 52nd floor, height of the platform 186 m). There is also an observation deck in the business centre of Antey.

There are many theatres in Yekaterinburg, as well as a philharmonic, circus, zoo, and an aqua park. Museums are plenty as well, there is the Museum of History of Yekaterinburg, Museum of Ural History and Archaeology, Museum of Nature, Museum of Radio, Museum of Fine Arts. In addition, the museum complex is located in the Literary Quarter. In the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore, you can see the world's oldest wooden sculpture – the Big Shigir Idol, its age according to the latest estimates is 11.6 thousand years. The most modern museum in Yekaterinburg is Boris Yeltsin’s Museum located in Yeltsin centre. Yeltsin Center itself has become a large public, cultural and educational centre, which hosts many bright, interesting events in the city.

Among the natural sights within the city limits the most interesting are the rocks of Shartash stone tents and lake Shartash, and the Baran peninsula on Upper Iset pond.

Explore Sverdlovsk Oblast with the PeakVisor 3D Map and identify its summits .

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