In Yekaterinburg there are two places related to the execution of the Romanov Imperial family in 1918. The first place is the Church on Blood built on the site of the Ipatiev House where the Romanov family were shot. The second place – Ganya Pit monastery – is an abandoned pit where the Bolsheviks threw the bodies of the last Emperor and his family.
As is known, in the Ural Mountains, in the environs of Yekaterinburg, there were discovered big deposits of gold and iron ore, and pits were built for their extraction. Hoping to find gold a contractor Gavriil bought a plot of land to the north of the city. Everyone called him Ganya and his pit – the Ganina Pit.
By the beginning of the 20 century the pit was abandoned and it became a nook on the outskirts of Yekaterinburg. The Bolsheviks used the opportunity and in the night from 16 to 17 of July 1918 shot the Romanov family and the members of their household at the Ipatiev House. They decided to threw the bodies in the Ganya`s Pit. So it may be acknowledged that it was in these places the events took place, which drastically changed the march of history - the monarchic Russia became a socialistic republic.
According to a document of July 17, 1918 kept at the Romanov Memorial Museum, Pyotr Voykov, the People`s Commissar for Government Supply for the Ural region demanded 5 poods (about 90 kg) of sulfuric acid. It was planned to use it to cover the bodies of the Romanov family in the pit.
However, later it was decided to move the bodies in a more remote and deep pit. But the lorry with the bodies was stuck 4 kilometers from the Ganya`s Pit and the bodies were buried near the road. The bodies were found and reinterred at the Peter and Paul Cathedral of St. Petersburg in 1991.
At the beginning of the 90th of the past century the construction of the Monastery of Holy Royal Martyrs began around the abandoned pits of the Ganya`s Pit, as all members of the Romanov family were canonized in 2000.
Several multi-domed wooden churches were erected in the middle of the pine wood surrounding the Ganya`s Pit: the main Church of Holy Royal Martyrs, the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, the Church of Job the Long-suffering, the Church of Seraphim of Sarov and some other churches.
