The Romanovs' Last Journey: Tsarskoye Selo to Yekaterinburg

After abdicating, Nicholas returned here "not as Emperor of Russia, but as Colonel Romanov". The family was held under house arrest, confined to a few rooms and watched by a guard with fixed bayonets. They kept busy: the Empress and her daughters sewed, while the others cleared paths and, as the weather warmed, worked an extensive kitchen-garden in the park. On the morning of 1 August 1917 a train took them away, and they never came back. Since August 2021 the east wing, with the private apartments, has been open to visitors.

Visitor guidance: The east wing with the family's private apartments reopened in 2021; check current opening hours.

The Provisional Government sent the family to Siberia. From August 1917 the former governor's house in Tobolsk held Nicholas, Alexandra, their five children and forty-five retainers. At first they lived in considerable comfort, but after the Bolsheviks took power the conditions grew stricter, and guards scribbled insulting graffiti on walls and benches. In April 1918 they were transferred to Yekaterinburg. The 1790s mansion on Mira Street reopened in 2018 as the Museum of the Family of Emperor Nicholas II.

Visitor guidance: Now a museum at 10 Mira Street, below the Tobolsk Kremlin.

The family moved into the Ipatiev House on 30 April 1918 and spent 78 days there. The windows were painted over and a high wooden fence closed the house off from the street. About midnight on 16–17 July 1918 they were told to dress for an evacuation and were led down to a small semi-basement room, where they were killed. The house was demolished in September 1977; Yeltsin later wrote that "sooner or later we will be ashamed of this piece of barbarism." The Church on the Blood now stands on the site.

Visitor guidance: The Church on the Blood marks the site and is a working church; dress and behave as in any place of worship.

In the pre-dawn hours of 17 July 1918 the bodies were taken to a disused mine called the Four Brothers, near the village of Koptyaki, and thrown into a pit. A week later White forces took the area and began an investigation; their report concluded the remains had been cremated at the mine, since they found signs of fire and charred bones. The Bolsheviks had in fact moved the bodies. Today a monastery stands here, with seven chapels, one for each member of the family.

Visitor guidance: A monastery complex about 15 km north of Yekaterinburg; each July a night service ends with a procession here from the Church on the Blood.

The second burial site was a field known as Porosyonkov Log, "Piglet's Ravine", about four and a half miles from Ganina Yama. Researchers found it in the late 1970s, but it stayed secret until the political climate changed in 1989. In 1995 the remains found there were identified as Romanov remains using DNA from living relatives. The Russian Orthodox Church, which doubted the identification, treats Ganina Yama as holy ground, so the question of the burial place remains a delicate one.

Location precision: Only the area is described in the sources, so this stop has no map pin; Ganina Yama lies a few miles to the north-west.