Weiner Street is Ekaterinburg's main pedestrian street, a broad boulevard closed to traffic and lined with shops, cafes, restaurants, and a collection of quirky bronze sculptures that invite photographs. It runs from the central square east toward the city's shopping district and is the natural place to spend an evening — street food vendors set up in summer, the cafes spill onto the pavement, and the street musicians range from folk to jazz to classical.
The bronze sculptures along the street are genuinely good fun: a life-sized photographer with a period camera, a pair of lovers on a bench, a fat banker counting money. Each one has a purpose — you rub the banker's coin for financial luck, you sit beside the lovers for a photograph. This kind of playful urban art is characteristic of Ekaterinburg's post-Soviet identity; the city has been deliberate about creating a liveable, attractive public realm rather than simply inheriting the Soviet one unchanged. The street is at its best in summer evenings, when half the city seems to be promenading.