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Ekaterinburg (Yekaterinburg), the capital city of the Urals was born of a czar -- founded in 1723 by Peter III (and named for his wife, Catherine) -- and witnessed the death of a czar -- the last, Nicholas II was assassinated, with his family, in a house there, by the Bolsheviks in July, 1918. The city's bloody reputation as the setting for the Romanov Dynasty's final chapter could not be erased even by the city's name-change to Sverdlovsk -- perhaps because the new name honored Bolshevik leader Yakov Sverdlov, who allegedly arranged the family's murder. Another dramatic episode in the area -- the 1960 downing of American U2 spyplane pilot Gary Powers -- only added to the air of intrigue, heightened further by the fact that the city was closed to the outside world (and even left off official maps) until 1990 because of its strategic defense industries. Today, the area is associated with another famous figure, Boris Yeltsin, who was born in the village of Butka. Through Yeltsin's efforts, Ekaterinburg's notorious Sverdlovsk-17biological weapons plant was closed in 1992. In 1979, a deadly anthrax leak from the plant killed 64 people. In 1977, also under Yeltsin's orders, the house where the czar and his family were killed was destroyed; a stone marker and wooden cross denote the spot. The city of 1.4 million has reeled, in recent years, from an economic depression spurred by plant and factory closings. Yet Ekaterinburg is a draw for geologists (fascinated by the mineral-rich Urals) and curious tourists who come for the Communist-era mystery and history, and find a city surprisingly rich in pre-Soviet churches and other architecture of an earlier era. And the ultimate photo op -- the Europe-Asia Obelisk -- is a mere 25 miles west of the city alongside the Moscow Highway, marking the border between the two continents.