Sevastyanov's House, Lenin Avenue & Vaynera Street in Yekaterinburg

Stretching for 4,600 metres from Kommunarov Square in the west to Kirov Square and the Ural Federal University main building in the east, Lenin Avenue (Prospekt Lenina, known before 1919 as Glavny Prospekt) is the ceremonial boulevard of Yekaterinburg. Along its central reach across Plotinka, nineteenth-century merchant palaces and imperial theatres stand alongside 1930s Constructivist blocks and the pedestrian shopping spine of Vaynera Street.

Sevastyanov's House (35 Lenin Avenue)

Dominating the intersection of Lenin Avenue and the eastern embankment of the City Pond is Sevastyanov's House (Dom Sevastyanova), an ornate nineteenth-century residence overlooking the water. A three-storey classicist stone house with a corner rotunda was documented on this plot between 1817 and 1823 for mining surveyor Ivan Polkov. In 1860 the estate was purchased by civil servant and industrialist Nikolai Ivanovich Sevastyanov, who commissioned provincial architect Alexander Paduchev in 1866 to remodel the mansion in an exuberant eclectic blend of Neo-Gothic, Neo-Baroque, and Moorish motifs.

Painted in striking emerald green, white, and terracotta red, the facade features a colonnaded corner belvedere rotunda facing the water, Gothic lancet window frames, and intricate foliate stucco. After Sevastyanov moved to Saint Petersburg, he sold the building in 1874 to the Yekaterinburg District Court; in 1917 it housed Russia's first Ural Commissariat of Labour, later serving as the regional trade union council before a comprehensive restoration in 2008 to 2009 ahead of the June 2009 SCO and BRIC summits. Since 2023, Sevastyanov's House has appeared on the reverse of the Russian 5,000-ruble banknote.

1905 Square and the 1912 Opera and Ballet Theatre

East of the City Pond at 46a Lenin Avenue stands the Yekaterinburg State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre, built between 1904 and 1912 to a Viennese Baroque Revival design by engineer Vladimir Semyonov and completed under architect Konstantin Babykin. Seating 1,200 spectators beneath statues of three muses on its central gable, the theatre opened on 29 September (12 October) 1912 with Mikhail Glinka's opera A Life for the Tsar. Heading west across Plotinka brings you to 1905 Square (formerly Cathedral Square), dominated by the spire and clock tower of the 1947 to 1954 City Hall.

Walking Pedestrian Vaynera Street ("Ural Arbat")

Turning south off 1905 Square, Vaynera Street (known before 1919 as Uspenskaya Street and dating back to the 1740s) is Yekaterinburg's oldest commercial thoroughfare. Pedestrianised between Lenin Avenue and Kuibyshev Street in 2003 to 2006, the brick-paved promenade is lined with nineteenth-century merchant trading rows, bronze street sculptures (including the 2006 peddler, banker, and inventor monuments), and the 1914 Art Nouveau former Granit printing house by Konstantin Babykin at 11 Vaynera Street, which opened in July 2021 as the Hermitage-Ural Cultural and Exhibition Centre.