Rastorguev-Kharitonov Palace

The Rastorguev-Kharitonov Palace is the finest pre-revolutionary mansion in Ekaterinburg and one of the best examples of Russian Empire architecture in the Urals. Built for an iron-magnate merchant family in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the yellow-and-white neoclassical building sits on Voznesensky Hill overlooking the city centre, surrounded by a formal English garden that is a pleasant place to walk in summer.

The palace is now used as a children's art school and is not always open for interior visits, but the exterior and garden can be appreciated freely. The building's proportions are elegant, with a central portico and lateral wings that give it a settled, aristocratic air unusual for a city as industrial as Ekaterinburg. From the garden the view down to the city centre and the Iset River is one of the best in Ekaterinburg. The area around the palace is worth wandering — the neighbourhood contains several other 18th- and 19th-century buildings from the city's merchant heyday.

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A story
The palace was built between 1794 and 1824 for the merchant Lev Rastorguev, a self-made man who had made his fortune in iron and copper smelting. Rastorguev was famously cruel to his serfs and was eventually investigated by the authorities after too many of them died under suspicious circumstances. He died before the investigation concluded and the estate passed to his son-in-law Kharitonov, whose name joined it. Russian legend holds that an underground tunnel runs from the basement to a point several kilometres away, and that the Rastorguev family hid their gold in it during emergencies.