First of two parts At its height, in the middle of the 19th century, the Russian Empire ruled by the Romanovs covered more than one-sixth of the surface of the globe. It was a glorious era for a dynasty that had sprung from obscure beginnings, when in 1613, in a bid to end years of civil unrest at home and conflict abroad, a young prince named Mikhail Feodorovich Romanov was hastily crowned Tsar and Autocrat of All Russia amid the ruins of the Kremlin Palace in Moscow.
The Romanov imperial line ran like a glittering thread through Russian history for the next 300 years. Its monarchs alternated between despotism and liberalism; their courts dazzled the world even as their subjects starved. The Romanovs brought Russia into the modern era, but were finally destroyed by the irresistible forces of the very modernity they had fostered. The universities thrown wide open by Alexander III in the 1850s proved breeding grounds for radical dissent that, one night in July 1918, spilled over in an act of regicide. In a dark cellar in Ekaterinberg, Tsar Nicholas II and his family were shot to death by Bolshevik soldiers -- and the thread of Romanov rule was snapped.
The rise and fall of the Romanovs is one of the most tumultuous stories of modern history, and it is brought vividly to life in an exhibition now showing at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.