Rare Last Photos Of The Romanovs

Alexei, Tatiana, and Her French Bulldog

This photograph, taken in the spring of 1917 during the Romanov’s captivity, shows Alexei, Tatiana, and her French bulldog Ortipo sitting on the grounds of Tsarskoe Selo. Ortipo was given to Tatiana while she worked as a nurse during the war by her favorite infirmary patient, Dmitri Malama. The dog was a favorite of the family and was mentioned frequently in diaries and letters. Ultimately, Ortipo would travel with Grand Duchess Tatiana and the Romanov family as far as Tobolsk, where it was recorded that Tatiana tried to balance the dog and her suitcase in her arms while the family walked in the mud from the train station to their quarters at Tobolsk.

Working During Internment

This photograph from the United States Library of Congress was taken in the spring of 1917. The photo shows Grand Duchess Tatiana during her captivity at Tsarskoe Selo. She transports lumps of sod on a stretcher with the aid of a soldier. It often fell upon Tatiana to hold her family together during captivity. She urged her mother to follow her father to Tobolsk when Alexei was too ill to be transported and helped her sisters and brother sew jewels into their clothing so they could go undetected by guards and would have funding to start a new life if they were able to escape.