In the early morning hours of July 17, 1918 the deposed Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their five children along with four staff members were ushered into a basement room of the Ipatev House in Yekaterinburg, where they had been kept as prisoners since April. A firing squad entered the room and opened fire. After the Romanov family was shot and stabbed to death, the bodies were removed to two nearby derelict mine shafts where the remains were burned and buried. For decades their location remained a mystery.
In 1998 a belated official funeral service was held for the Romanovs in St. Petersburg. The surviving members of the extended Romanov family attended, along with President Boris Yeltsin and international visitors as the Tsar’s coffin was lowered into its grave at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral exactly 80 years after his execution.
In 2000, the Romanov family was accepted as “passion bearers,” or those who accepted death with Christ-like humility, in the Russian Orthodox Church within Russia, and construction began of a memorial chapel on the spot where the Ipatev House stood. It is now known as Khram na Krovi, or Church on the Blood. The two levels of the church symbolize the following: the lower one is the basement of the Ipatiev house, the upper one is an unquenchable lamp, which is lit in memory of the tragic events. The church complex includes a museum dedicated to the Romanovs. Orthodox fairs, religious processions are organized here and famous guests are brought here for excursions.
In 2001 the Russian Orthodox Church along with the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company constructed seven chapels and Monastery of the Holy Tsarist Passion-Bearers at Ganina Yama to commemorate each member of the royal family. Ganina Yama marks the “official” burial spot of the Romanovs.
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