Tsar-Struck Russians Mark 100th Anniversary Of Romanov Killings

The procession wound along a highway near the central Russian city of Yekaterinburg on the morning of July 17. 

Marchers set off from the site of the 1918 murders and marched 21 kilometers to where Bolshevik revolutionaries dumped the bodies of Tsar Nicholas II and his family in a hasty burial. 

The march had a deeply religious tone. The tsar and his family were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. 

Pilgrims in Tsarist-style uniforms. Tsarist history is a complex topic in modern Russia. Celebration of the royal family was repressed during the Soviet era, and Moscow still has a subway station, Voikovskaya, named after a Bolshevik leader allegedly involved in the execution of the Romanovs...

...but the image of Russia's ill-fated tsar has undergone a renaissance, with the now annual commemoration growing in size each year. One pilgrim told a TASS reporter the march began as a tiny procession immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union. "There were only nine of us on the march back in 1992," he said.

A woman pays her respects near the church at the site of the murders. 

The centenary march reportedly drew pilgrims from around the world, including from Europe and the United States. 

Marchers at the church marking the spot where the royal family were killed. The church was built on the site in the early 2000s. The house in which the murders took place was destroyed in 1977.