Old photos · Russia
Old photos of Yekaterinburg
Most of its photographs are of Sverdlovsk, as the city was called from 1924 to 1991 — the Ipatiev House among them, photographed right up to its demolition in September 1977.
Time Portal's archive holds about 14,000 photographs of Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk, Ekaterinburg), taken between 1865 and 2000, each pinned to the spot where the photographer stood. 64% of them date from 1955 or later and are free to browse at map.timeportal.app with no account; the older ones open with Pro. The oldest, dated 1865–1870 in the archive, shows a view of Uktus on the edge of the city, from an album of the Urals published in 1870.
- Photographs
- 14,000
- Oldest
- 1865–1870
- Busiest decade
- 1980s
- Free, 1955 on
- 64%
How many photographs, decade by decade
The busiest decades for Yekaterinburg are the 1980s and the 1970s — 2,731 and 2,322 photographs. 331 were taken before 1900. Everything from 1955 onward is free to open on the map; the older photographs are part of Pro.
| Decade | Relative size | Photographs |
|---|---|---|
| before 1860 | 0 | |
| 1860s | 15 | |
| 1870s | 20 | |
| 1880s | 155 | |
| 1890s | 141 | |
| 1900s | 387 | |
| 1910s | 400 | |
| 1920s | 742 | |
| 1930s | 1,688 | |
| 1940s | 769 | |
| 1950s | 1,454 | |
| 1960s | 1,583 | |
| 1970s | 2,322 | |
| 1980s | 2,731 | |
| 1990s | 1,708 |
Where the photographs were taken
Counted in a small square around each place — about 200 metres each way — so a number is every photograph taken there, of the place itself or of the street beside it. Each place opens the map on that spot.
| Place | Photos | Oldest |
|---|---|---|
| 1905 Square | 1,032 | 1866–1869 |
| The Plotinka | 599 | 1887 |
| The Church on the Blood | 424 | 1900–1902 |
| The Opera House | 513 | 1910 |
| The railway station | 232 | 1911–1913 |
| The Ural Polytechnic Institute | 146 | 1929–1932 |
What changed
Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723 around an ironworks, and the dam that drove it — the Plotinka on the Iset — is still the middle of the city. The cathedral that gave 1905 Square its old name was pulled down in 1930, and the square was rebuilt around the city hall and, from 1957, a monument to Lenin.
In the Ipatiev House on Voznesenskaya Hill the Bolsheviks shot Nicholas II and his family in July 1918. The house was demolished in September 1977, and the Church on the Blood was built on the site, consecrated in 2003.
Questions about old photos of Yekaterinburg
Where can I see old photos of Yekaterinburg on a map?
On Time Portal: about 14,000 photographs of Yekaterinburg, each pinned where it was taken, most with the direction the camera faced. The map is free in any browser at map.timeportal.app — photographs from 1955 on need no account — and there is an app for iPhone and iPad.
What is the oldest photograph of Yekaterinburg in the archive?
The oldest precisely dated photograph, from 1865–1870, shows a view of Uktus on the edge of the city, from an album of the Urals published in 1870. 331 of the Yekaterinburg photographs were taken before 1900.
Which years of Yekaterinburg are best covered?
The 1980s, with 2,731 photographs, and the 1970s, with 2,322. 64% of the Yekaterinburg photographs date from 1955 or later.
Open Yekaterinburg on the map
Other cities: Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kyiv, New York, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, Nizhny Novgorod, Prague, Kazan, Stockholm, Vyborg, Kaliningrad, Tbilisi, Tashkent, Odesa, Samarkand, Riga, Rome, Minsk, London, Volgograd, Tallinn. Or search any address on the map, or in the app.
The counts on this page are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 — credit Time Portal and link here. The photographs are not ours to license: they belong to their photographers and the archives that keep them.