St. Petersburg welcomed Russia's last tsar home on Thursday, July 16, 1998, when nine small coffins bearing the remains of Nicholas II, his family, and four servants arrived from Yekaterinburg and were transferred to the Peter and Paul Fortress to lie in state before Friday's interment.

The funeral procession started at the city's Pulkovo-1 domestic airport when the nine small wooden coffins were ceremoniously unloaded from the plane that had flown them from Yekaterinburg - the Ural Mountains city where the remains were exhumed in 1991 - and each casket was placed in one of nine mini-vans with black trim.

After the procession arrived in the Peter and Paul Fortress and approached St. Peter and Paul Cathedral, the small coffins were removed from the vans and carried into the cathedral by the Russian Military Honor Guard.

Once inside the cathedral, the coffins were laid on a three-tiered podium. The emperor and empress were placed on the highest tier, followed by the children, and finally the servants on the lowest.

In front of the podium stood the St. Petersburg Male Choir, which sang Orthodox liturgical hymns.

About 50 surviving Romanovs came to St. Petersburg from all over the world to attend the ceremony to pay their respects.

The Russian Orthodox Church did not recognize the remains as those of the royal family. However, Russian patriarch Alexii II announced that requiem services for the murdered Emperor, his family and all those martyred in the years of persecution would be conducted on this day in our churches; the same requiem service would be conducted at the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul in the city of St. Petersburg.

Addressing the burial ceremony, President Boris Yeltsin described the murder of the Romanovs as one of the most shameful pages in Russian history and urged Russians to close a "bloody century" with repentance.