Although the city of Sverdlovsk has since regained its pre-revolutionary name of Yekaterinburg, the region is still known as the Sverdlovsk Region. The region is surrounded by the Kurgan, Tyumen and Chelyabinsk Regions, the Perm Territory, the republics of Bashkortostan and Komi and the Khanty-Mansiysk  Autonomous District.  The border between Europe and Asia runs through the region, as does the Trans-Siberian Railway.

  The administrative centre is the city of Yekaterinburg which is the fourth largest city in Russia, after Moscow, St Petersburg and Novosibirsk.  It is named in honour of Peter the Great’s second wife - Empress Catherine I.  Emperor Nicholas II and his family were murdered in the city in 1918 and buried outside the city in a disused mineshaft where there is now a monastery in their memory.  The region also has its own equivalent of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the city of Nevyansk.