It's not just you. The Ipatiev house is difficult to understand, and it is FULL of stairways. (There are at least four.)
I just can't understand why there are 2 stairs.
I'm not sure, either. It may be because the house was built into the side of a hill, so the street is higher than the yard. One stairway takes you down to the front sidewalk on the east facade, and the other goes down to the courtyard on the north side of the house.
I mean: you open the front door, there's the first stair. First of all: can you, standing HERE, go in the basement? It seems yes.
No, that's the stairway leading from the front door up to the main floor.
But in this plan, that refers only to the upper floor, there are two stairs. When that's written "Antichambre" (hall) you can already go in the other rooms. But there isn't ANOTHER stair; why, if there's not another floor? Is it another stair or the same one?
The stairway in the "Passage" leads down to the courtyard. This was one of two stairways used by NAOTMAA on the night of the executions. At the bottom of the
Passage stairway they stepped out into the courtyard from the door on the left, and entered the door on the right:
Another short stairway inside that door led down to the cellar. This plan of the basement level shows the path the IF took to the execution chamber after they reached the courtyard:
The stairway that baffles me is the one inside the room labeled "Chambre." This stairway leads directly from the middle of the house down to the basement! I have no idea why Yurovsky didn't use that more direct route on the night of the murder.