Photos

This is one of the churches from the Monastery of Romanov's at the Ganina Yama (15 km from Ekaterinburg).
Last Russian Tzar - Nikolai II and his family were executed in the basement of house of ingineer Ipatiev (Ekaterinburg) on the night 16-17th of July in 1918. Just after the well-known midnight tragedy the corpses were transported out of the city and put in an open mine (about 10 meters deep), called Ganya's pit. Hand grenades were thrown down the mine shaft by their executioners. Soon the bodies were taken out of the mine, dissected and burnt into ash. But the killers did not stop there and decided to remove the remains to conceal the act because they never wanted anyone to know about the remains.
The burial place was opened only in July, 1991. It is 15 km from Ekaterinburg. It was a tract of forest ( the former Koptyakovsaya Road). Piled skeletons and separate skeleton-like remains of nine people were found in the grave at a depths from 70cm to 1 m.
The monastery was founded in 2000 after the visit of Patriarch Alexi II - the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. There are 5 churches in the Names of Saint Newly Martyrs that have been built in honor of the different Russian saists on the place where the remains of the Romanov's were burnt. The churches were built with local timber without the aid of any nails.