Imperial era
The first Russian settlements within the boundaries of modern Yekaterinburg appeared in the second half of the 17th century — in 1672, an Old Believers village arose in the area of Shartash lake (this fact is disputed by historians, since no evidence of the founding of the village at that time was found in the sources), and in 1680–1682, the villages of Nizhny and Verkhny Uktus appeared on the banks of Uktus River (now the territory of the Chkalovsky district of the city). In 1702, by the initiative of the head of Sibirskiy prikaz Andrew Vinius, the Uktus state ironwork plant was founded near Nizhny Uktus — the first ironworks within the boundaries of modern Yekaterinburg. In 1704, the Shuvakish ironworks was built (now the territory of the Zheleznodorozhny district of the city). With the beginning of active construction of factories in the Urals in the 18th century, relations with their southern neighbors, the Bashkirs, became strained. As a result of the Bashkir raid in 1709, the village of Verkhny Uktus was devastated, all buildings, including the wooden church and chapel, were burned, the residents fled to the protection of the Uktus plant fortifications. On the night of 5 April 1718, a fire destroyed all the factory buildings of the Uktus plant, except for the dam, and the plant was restored only by 1720 under the supervision of Timofey Burtsev. However, the plant did not receive further development due to the lack of water in Uktus river.
In 1720, by decree of Peter I, a delegation led by mining specialist Johann Blüher and statesman Vasily Tatishchev was sent to the Urals. They were entrusted with managing the mining industry, identifying the causes of the collapse and reduction of production at state-owned factories. On 29 December 1720, Tatishchev and Blüher arrive at the Uktus plant, which became their main residence in the Urals. As a result of familiarizing himself with the state of nearby state-owned factories, Tatishchev came to the conclusion that on the basis of these factories, even if they were reconstructed and expanded, it would not be possible to quickly increase the production of iron, and it would be more profitable to build a new large plant. After inspecting the immediate area, together with the commissary of the Uktus plant, Timofey Burtsev, a place rich in ore and forest was chosen on the banks of the more full-flowing Iset River, 7 versts from Uktus. On 6 February 1721, Tatishchev sent a message to the Collegium of Mining, in which he asked permission to begin construction of the plant, with detailed explanations and justification for this project. On 1 March 1721, without waiting for a response from the Collegium, Tatishchev began construction of the new plant, but he failed to convince Collegium, and by the Collegium decree of 10 December 1721, he was removed from the leadership of mining affairs in the Urals. In 1722, by decree of Peter the Great, a mining engineer, Major General Georg Wilhelm de Gennin, was sent to the Urals in place of Tatishchev. Having studied all the circumstances, de Gennin fully supported Tatishchev’s project, and on 12 March 1723, construction of the plant on Iset resumed.
Russian historian Vasily Tatishchev and Russian engineer Georg Wilhelm de Gennin founded Yekaterinburg with the construction of a massive iron-making plant under the decree of Russian emperor Peter the Great in 1723. They named the city after the emperor's wife, Yekaterina, who later became empress regnant Catherine I. Officially, the city's founding date is 18 November 1723, when the shops carried out a test run of the bloomery for trip hammers. The plant was commissioned 6 days later, on 24 November. 1723 also saw the establishment of Yekaterinburg fortress, which would encompass many of the settlement's earliest buildings. Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak very vividly described the beginning of the construction of a mining plant and a fortress: "Imagine completely deserted banks of the Iset river, covered with forest. In the spring of 1723, soldiers from Tobolsk, peasants of the assigned settlements, hired craftsmen appeared, and everything around came to life, as if by the dictates of a fairy tale. They dropped the forest, prepared a place for the dam, laid blast furnaces, raised the rampart, set up barracks and houses for the authorities... ".
In 1722–1726 the Verkhne-Uktussky mining plant was built, which was officially called the plant of the princess Elizabeth (the future village of Elizabeth, or Elizavetinskoe) and became a part of modern Yekaterinburg in 1934. In 1726, Wilhelm de Gennin founded an auxiliary Verkh-Isetsky plant with a working settlement 2 versts from Yekaterinburg upstream ('verkh' in Russian) the Iset River. The plant's dam formed the Verkh-Isetsky pond. Colloquially called by the Russian acronym VIZ, it was a satellite town until in 1926, with a population of over 20,000 people by this time, it was incorporated into Yekaterinburg as the core of the Verkh-Isetsky district.
Yekaterinburg was one of the industrial cities of Russia prompted at the beginning of the 18th century by decrees of Tsar Peter the Great which demanded the development of the metalworking industry. With extensive use of iron, the city was built to a regular square plan with ironworks and residential buildings at the centre. These were surrounded by fortified walls so that Yekaterinburg was at the same time both a manufacturing centre and a fortress at the frontier between Europe and Asia. It, therefore, found itself at the heart of Russia's strategy for further development of the entire Ural region. The so-called Siberian Route became operational in 1763 and placed the city on an increasingly important transit route, which led to its development as a focus of trade and commerce between east and west, and gave rise to the description of the city as the "window to Asia". With the growth in trade and the city's administrative importance, the ironworks became less critical, and the more important buildings were increasingly built using expensive stone. Small manufacturing and trading businesses proliferated. In 1781 Russia's empress, Catherine the Great, granted Yekaterinburg town status and nominated it as the administrative centre for the wider region within Perm Governorate. In 1807, the role of the capital of the mining and smelting region was confirmed by assigning it the status of the only "mountain city" in Russia. Until 1863, Yekaterinburg remained subordinate to the head of the mining plants of the Ural ridge, the minister of finance and personally to the emperor, and enjoyed considerable freedom from the governor's power. Since the 1830s, mountainous Yekaterinburg has become the center of mechanical engineering.
In 1820–1845, 45% of the world's gold was mined in Yekaterinburg. Until 1876, 80% of the coins in circulation in the Russian Empire were produced at the Yekaterinburg Mint.
Following the October Revolution, the family of deposed Tsar Nicholas II was sent to internal exile in Yekaterinburg where they were imprisoned in the Ipatiev House in the city. In July 1918, the Czechoslovak Legions were closing on Yekaterinburg. In the early hours of the morning of 17 July, the deposed Tsar, his wife Alexandra, and their children Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Tsarevich Alexei were murdered by the Bolsheviks at the Ipatiev House. Other members of the Romanov family were killed at Alapayevsk later the same day. The Legions arrived less than a week later and captured the city. The city remained under the control of the White movement in which a provisional government was established. The Red Army took back the city and restored Soviet authority on 14 July 1919.
