The turquoise wedding-cake of the Urals – a bureaucrat’s Gothic-Moorish fantasy on the city pond, now the presidential residence of Yekaterinburg.
At a glance
- Type
- Mansion, now official residence
- Period
- 1863-1866
- Style
- Gothic-Moorish eclecticism
- Location
- Lenin Avenue at the City Pond, Yekaterinburg, Russia
- Coordinates
- 56.8389, 60.6057
- Architect
- Alexander Paduchev
Overview
The Sevastyanov House rounds its corner rotunda onto Yekaterinburg’s city pond in tiers of turquoise, white, and terracotta – Gothic windows under Moorish arches under a ribbed dome, the most exuberant mansion of the Urals. Collegiate assessor Nikolai Sevastyanov’s 1860s remodel of a classical shell produced the confection every visitor photographs first.
History
Legend says Sevastyanov sought a dome gilded like a church’s and was refused; the splendour anyway outran his rank, and he sold to the state – the district court sat here through empire and revolution. Soviet trade unions followed; the 2008 restoration for summit diplomacy made it the Russian president’s Yekaterinburg residence, its colours renewed to candy brilliance.
Architecture and Design
Paduchev wrapped the corner with a colonnaded rotunda – unique in Russian eclecticism – and laced the facades with lancets, ogees, and crockets in painted stucco. The pond setting doubles the apparition; the interiors’ ceremonial halls serve state occasions unseen by the public.
Cultural significance
The house is Yekaterinburg’s civic jewel – the industrial capital’s flourish of fantasy – holding the embankment where the city’s history from Demidov iron to the Romanovs’ end concentrates within a few hundred metres.
Visiting today
The exterior composes best across the pond and from Lenin Avenue’s corner; interior access is by official function only. The Church on the Blood and the 1905 Square stand nearby.
Getting there
Ploshchad 1905 Goda metro is five minutes’ walk; the house marks the pond’s southeast corner at the historic dam.
Sources and resources
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