Cathedral on the Blood

The Cathedral on the Blood is built on the site of Ipatiev House, where Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family were executed by the Bolsheviks on 17 July 1918. The original house was demolished in 1977 on the orders of the local Communist Party chief — Boris Yeltsin, who would later become Russia's first president and who reportedly said demolishing the building was the order he most regretted obeying. The cathedral that replaced it is a large, multi-domed Russian Orthodox church that opened in 2003.

The interior is richly decorated and contains relics related to the Romanov family, who were canonised as saints by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. The lower church, at the level where the executions took place, is a memorial space of considerable solemnity. On 17 July each year, thousands of pilgrims walk overnight from Ekaterinburg to the forest burial site at Ganina Yama as part of a major religious commemoration. The cathedral is the most visited site in the city and a place where contemporary Russian history feels tangible and unresolved.

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A story
On the night of 16–17 July 1918, Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, their five children, and four servants were led into the basement of Ipatiev House and shot. The youngest daughter, Anastasia, survived the initial volley and was bayoneted. The bodies were driven to a forest outside the city, doused with acid, and buried in a pit. Decades later the burial site was found, the remains identified through DNA analysis, and the family canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church. The cathedral now stands exactly where they died.

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