Ipatiev House

Ipatiev House (Russian: Дóм Ипáтьева) was a merchant's house in Yekaterinburg (city in 1924 renamed Sverdlovsk, in 1991 renamed back to Yekaterinburg) where the abdicated Emperor Nicholas II of Russia (1868–1918, reigned 1894–1917), all his immediate family, and other members of his household were murdered[1] in July 1918 following the Bolshevik Revolution.

In the 1880s, Ivan Redikortsev, an official involved in the mining industry, commissioned a two-story house to be built on the slope of a prominent hill.

Ten years later, the house was acquired by Nikolai Nikolayevich Ipatiev, a military engineer, who turned the ground floor into his office.

[2] It seems to have been on the basis of information supplied by Pyotr Voykov that Ipatiev was summoned to the office of the Ural Soviet at the end of April 1918 and ordered to vacate what was soon to be called "The House of Special Purpose."

This household included Tsar Nicholas Romanov, his wife, the Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna of Hesse, their four daughters, their son and heir Alexei, the Tsarevich (crown prince); their court physician Dr. Yevgeny Botkin, chambermaid Anna Demidova, cook Ivan Kharitonov, and valet Alexei Trupp.

The reason given was that the anti-Bolshevik White Army forces of Tsarist and moderate democratic socialists in the ensuing Russian Civil War of 1918–1921, were nearing the city and that there had been firing in the streets.

After taking about half an hour to dress and pack, the Romanovs, Botkin and the three servants were led down a flight of stairs into the courtyard of the house, and from there through a ground-floor entrance to a small semi-basement room at the back of the building.

During this period it was customary for party apparatchiks to arrive in large tour groups, posing before the bullet-damaged wall of the cellar in which the former Tsar and his family had been executed.

[citation needed] In 1977, as the sixtieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution approached, the Politburo decided to take action, declaring that the house was not of "sufficient historical significance", and ordering its demolition.

[citation needed] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union that was complete by 1991 the Church on the Blood, one of the largest in Russia, was built on the site.