Colorized by me: The basement of the Ipatiev house where the Romanov family was killed #OnThisDay in 1918.
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Around midnight, Yurovsky ordered the Romanovs' physician, Eugene Botkin, to awaken the sleeping family and ask them to put on their clothes...
under the pretext that the family would be moved to a safe location due to impending chaos in Yekaterinburg. The Romanovs were then ordered into this 6 m × 5 m (20 ft × 16 ft) semi-basement room.
Nicholas asked if Yurovsky could bring two chairs, on which Tsarevich Alexei and Alexandra sat. Yurovsky's assistant Grigory Nikulin remarked to him that the "heir wanted to die in a chair. Very well then, let him have one."
The prisoners were told to wait in the cellar room. A few minutes later, an execution squad of secret police was brought in and Yurovsky (photo) read aloud the order given to him by the Ural Executive Committee.
"Nikolai Alexandrovich, in view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their attack on Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee has decided to execute you".
Nicholas, facing his family, said "What? What?"
Yurovsky quickly repeated the order and the weapons were raised. The Empress and Grand Duchess Olga, according to a guard's reminiscence, had tried to bless themselves, but failed amid the shooting.
Yurovsky reportedly raised his Colt gun at Nicholas's torso and fired; Nicholas fell dead, pierced with at least three bullets in his upper chest. The intoxicated Peter Ermakov, the military commissar for Verkh-Isetsk, shot and killed Alexandra with a bullet wound to the head.
He then shot at Maria, who ran for the double doors, hitting her in the thigh.
The remaining executioners shot chaotically and over each other's shoulders until the room was so filled with smoke and dust that no one could see anything at all.
Within minutes, Yurovsky was forced to stop the shooting because of the caustic smoke of burned gunpowder, dust from the plaster ceiling caused by the reverberation of bullets, and the deafening gunshots. When they stopped, the doors were then opened to scatter the smoke.
While waiting for the smoke to abate, the killers could hear moans and whimpers inside the room. As it cleared, it became evident that although several of the family's retainers had been killed, all of the Imperial children were alive and only Maria was injured.
The executioners were ordered to use their bayonets, a technique which proved ineffective and meant that the children had to be dispatched by still more gunshots, this time aimed more precisely at their heads.
The Tsarevich was the first of the children to be executed.
Yurovsky watched in disbelief as Nikulin spent an entire magazine from his Browning gun on Alexei, who was still seated transfixed in his chair. Ermakov shot and stabbed him, and when that failed, Yurovsky shoved him aside and killed the boy with a gunshot to the head.
The last to die were Tatiana, Anastasia, and Maria, who were carrying a few pounds (over 1.3 kilograms) of diamonds sewn into their clothing, which had given them a degree of protection from the firing.
However, they were speared with bayonets as well. Olga sustained a gunshot wound to the head. Maria and Anastasia were said to have crouched up against a wall covering their heads in terror until they were shot.
While the bodies were being placed on stretchers, one of the girls cried out and covered her face with her arm. Ermakov grabbed Alexander Strekotin's rifle and bayoneted her in the chest, but when it failed to penetrate he pulled out his revolver and shot her in the head.
While Yurovsky was checking the victims for pulses, Ermakov walked through the room, flailing the bodies with his bayonet. The execution lasted about 20 minutes.
Future investigations calculated that a possible 70 bullets were fired, roughly seven bullets per shooter, of which 57 were found in the basement and at all three subsequent gravesites. Only Alexei's spaniel, Joy, survived, living out his final days in Windsor, Berkshire.
The bodies of the Romanovs were loaded onto a Fiat truck. Heavily laden, the vehicle struggled for nine miles on boggy road to reach the Koptyaki forest. About half a mile further on, 25 men - intoxicated - were waiting with horses and light carts.
A few of Ermakov's men pawed the female bodies for diamonds hidden in their undergarments, two of whom lifted up Alexandra's skirt and fingered her genitals. Yurovsky ordered them at gunpoint to back off, dismissing the two who had groped the tsarina's corpse.
One of the men said that he could "die in peace", having touched the "royal cunt".
Yurovsky and five other men laid out the bodies on the grass and undressed them, the clothes piled up and burned while Yurovsky took inventory of their jewellery.
Once the bodies were "completely naked" they were dumped into a mineshaft and doused with sulphuric acid to disfigure them beyond recognition; their faces smashed with rifle butts and covered with quicklime. Railroad ties were placed over the grave to disguise it.
Alexei and his sister were burned in a bonfire and their remaining charred bones were thoroughly smashed with spades and tossed into a smaller pit. The burial was completed at 6 am on 19 July.
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