Sights in Crimea
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Chufut-Kale
For many visitors, Chufut-Kale will prove to be Bakhchysaray's highlight. Rising 200m, this long and bluff plateau houses a honeycomb of caves and structures where people took refuge for centuries. It's wonderful to explore, especially (but gingerly) the burial chambers and casemates with large open 'windows' in the vertiginous northern cliff. These are truly breathtaking, as is the view into the valley below.
Although the joint entrance to the Uspensky Monastery and Chufut-Kale looks a bit touristy, the 1.5km walk to the cave city ensures it's not too overrun with people.
First appearing in historical records as Kyrk-Or (Forty Fortifications), the city was settled sometim…
reviewed
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Novy Svit Beach
Although 7km outside Sudak, the beach at Novy Svit Beach is very much part of the same experience. In high season, buses and marshrutky wind regularly across the slightly hairy but breathtakingly gorgeous mountain road connecting Sudak with this popular satellite. Each bus is jam-packed with day-trippers coming to water-ski, jet-ski, scuba dive, hire pedalos and swim.
Whether in the high season or the more relaxed and arguably more amenable shoulder period, Novy Svit bay is generally considered to have some of the best beachfront in Crimea. And that's not just because there's sand, albeit of a greyish complexion; it's also because of its scenic setting between the 474m Mt…
reviewed
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Tsarske Kurgan
One of Kerch’s most talked-about attractions that is actually out in the boondocks and require genuine interest and tenacity - Tsarske Kurgan is an empty 4th-century BC burial mound, thought to be the grave of a Bosporan king. Its exterior is typically Scythian but its symmetrical interior was built by Greeks. To get here, catch the hourly bus 4 to the stop ‘Muzey’, walk back past this obviously Soviet ‘Underground Museum of the Defence of the Adzhimushkai Quarries’, down the dirt track (vul Skifskaya) under the buzzing electricity pylons, and past the rubbish dump and savage baying dogs. Veer left before the rail tracks and follow the track around. Leave yourself …
reviewed
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Livadia Palace
It’s not the most sumptuously furnished Crimean interior, but Livadia Palace reverberates with history. It’s the site of the 1945 Yalta Conference, where dying US president Franklin Roosevelt and heat-allergic British prime minister Winston Churchill turned up to be bullied by Soviet leader Josef Stalin. While here, Churchill declared steamy Crimea ‘the Riviera of Hades’. No wonder, given the high temperatures and the company he was keeping. Stalin’s insistent demands to keep Poland and other swathes of Eastern Europe shaped the face of postwar Europe. Even as huge tour groups nearly trample you in a race to the overflowing souvenir shops in the furthest rooms, it’s har…
reviewed
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Novy Svit Botanic Reserve
Once you alight at Novy Svit, most amenities are clearly signposted or easily apparent. However, it’s worth knowing about the Novy Svit Botanic Reserve winding around the base of Mt Orel. This path takes you on a picturesque, if rather slippery, coastal walk through a seaside grotto where local 19th-century tycoon Prince Holitsyn used to hold high-society parties. Today there’s a funfair atmosphere down here, with costumes hired out for photos and a famous bungee-jump type contraption, where brave – or perhaps foolhardy? – souls swing on a rope over the mouth of the grotto for just 20uah. It’s called ‘the leap into the future’.
reviewed
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A
Khersones
The ruins of the ancient Greek city of Khersones have great significance for local visitors. Founded in 422 BC, Khersones is where Volodymyr the Great was famously baptised into Christianity in 989 AD, launching what would become the Russian Orthodox Church. Tatars destroyed the city in the 14th century, but excavations have revealed a row of marble columns a few metres from the shore. For overseas travellers, it’s just a nice seaside photo opportunity, particularly with the stone arch, whose bell comes from a Crimean War cannon.
reviewed
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Nikitsky Botanic Gardens
The Nikitsky Botanic Gardens let you sample a wide range of the world’s flora, just wandering around the 3 sq km of their hillside (and seaside) grounds. Founded under the order of the tsar in 1812, they were designed to collect and then disseminate the planet’s species throughout Russia. Today ‘Nikita’, as they’re nicknamed, house up to 28,000 species, including olive trees and roses, cacti, ancient yews and pistachios. An on-site café only improves the experience.
reviewed
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Alupkinsky Palace Museum
Visiting the Alupkinsky Palace Museum takes you firstly into the palace’s luxuriant interior, which includes an imitation Wedgwood ‘blue room’, an English-style dining hall and an indoor conservatory. However, the best views are from the lush gardens behind the palace, where six marble lions flank the staircase framed against the backdrop of Mt Ay-Petri. British PM Churchill joked that one of the lions looked like him – minus the trademark cigar.
reviewed
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Uspensky Monastery
Stop for a moment and say 'aah!' at possibly the cutest little church in a country absolutely jam-packed with them. Part of the small Uspensky Monastery, the Gold-Domed Church has been built into the limestone rock of the surrounding hill, probably by Byzantine monks in the 8th or 9th century. Whitewashed monks' cells, a 'healing' fountain and tiled mosaics cling to the hillside too. Of course, the Soviets closed the place down, but it's been operating again since 1993.
reviewed
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B
Painted Panorama
The focus of Sevastopol’s wartime memories is the painted panorama, on a hill near the centre of town. A painting around the inner wall of a circular building is supplemented with 3-D props designed to bring the 349-day siege of Sevastopol to life. Entry is only as part of a group tour, leaving at allotted times (usually every hour in summer; last entry is 45 minutes before closing). Some of the signage below the platform is in English.
reviewed
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Panticapaeum
The ruins of the ancient city of Panticapaeum have been revealed in an ongoing archaeological dig. Take the 432 stairs up the central Mithridates Hill - even if you have to pick you way through the broken beer bottles that litter every single one of those steps. The view from the summit is brilliant, and on the leeside is Panticapaeum. Be careful coming back down the stairs, especially at the prime viewing time of dusk, as a crucial railing is missing.
reviewed
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Genoese Fortress of Cembalo
Unsurprisingly, others discovered this wonderful cove before the British navy; the settlement is about 2500 years old and even mentioned in Homer's Odyssey as a pirate's den. Today, the oldest surviving reminders of earlier habitation are the three towers from the 15th-century Genoese Fortress of Cembalo. These are probably still under scaffolding, as there's an (overly?) ambitious plan to reconstruct the entire fortress.
reviewed
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Khans’ Palace
When she was busy ordering the mass destruction of Bakhchysaray’s mosques in the 18th and early 19th centuries, Catherine the Great spared the Khans’ Palace. Her decision was reportedly based on the building being ‘romantic’, and it is sweet. While it lacks the imposing grandeur of Islamic structures in, say, Istanbul, this is a major landmark of Crimean culture and history.
reviewed
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C
Kebi-Djami Mosque
A young city, founded in the 18th century under Russia’s Catherine the Great, Simferopol contains no must-sees. Remnants do survive, however, of earlier civilisations on the same site. The most interesting is the restored 16th-century Kebi-Djami mosque, which dates back to the Crimean Tatar town of Ak-Mechet (White Mosque).
reviewed
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D
Chekhov House-Museum
With many of Yalta’s attractions a short distance away, the Chekhov House-Museum is the only must-see in town. It’s sort of The Cherry Orchard incarnate. Not only did Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) pen that classic play here, the lush garden would appeal to the most horticulturally challenged audience.
reviewed
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Neopolis
There’s little sense of history about the much-touted Neopolis, 2km east of the centre. However, it offers a good view of Simferopol in all its Soviet-constructivist glory, should you be tempted by such things. Archaeological excavations of a late Scythian city (300 BC–AD 300) seem to have been abandoned.
reviewed
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Nab Lenina
Step right up! Take a stroll along nab Lenina, the good-time seaside promenade. The sea view is not at its best here - rusting ships along the jetty, anyone? - but it's the town's main artery, pulsing with life. The pedestrian zone passes palm trees, restaurants, clubs, shops, stalls and photographers before reaching Primorsky Park.
reviewed
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Ayvazovsky Museum
The Ayvazovsky Museum demonstrates why the local-boy-made-good is so revered, with hundreds of his paintings of breaking waves and ships. His luminescent skies draw parallels with England’s Turner (who became an Ayvazovsky fan), while his moody seas are reminiscent of Germany’s Caspar David Friedrich.
reviewed
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Naval Museum
In the naval museum you can breach the huge nuclear-blast-proof doors and wander some of the 600m of the former repair docks, mess rooms and thankfully now empty arsenal on a one-hour-long guided tour. When MTV launched in Ukraine in 2007, this is where it held the party. But take a jumper; it gets chilly inside.
reviewed
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Eminé-Ba’ir-Khosar
Mt Chatyr-Dag (1527m) lies west of the Alushta–Simferopol road and is renowned for the numerous caves that lie beneath it. One of them is the Eminé-Ba’ir-Khosar. They’re not world-beating, but maybe worth seeing if you’re staying longer in Crimea.
reviewed
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Swallow’s Nest
Like many movie stars, Swallow’s Nest is shorter in real life than it appears in pictures. This toy-town castle is a favourite subject for Crimean postcards, but it’s only big enough to house an expensive and exceedingly disappointing Italian restaurant.
reviewed
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Kara-Dag Nature Reserve Bio-Station
The Kara-Dag Nature Reserve bio-station is on the outskirts of Kurortne hamlet. Anyone is free to visit the aquarium, dolphinarium and botanic gardens, but for environmental reasons you’re not allowed on the main part of Kara-Dag territory without a guide.
reviewed
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Genoese Fortress
Its vertiginous location is one of the major appeals of Sudak’s Genoese Fortress. This once impregnable complex is perched on a massive seaside cliff and in true Ukrainian fashion you’re allowed to clamber all over it, at times perhaps unsafely.
reviewed
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E
Crimean Ethnographic Museum
The memorable thing about the modest Crimean Ethnographic Museum is its first room. It boasts a 3-D relief map of Crimea, populated with nearly 50 colourful small statues representing the peninsula’s different peoples throughout history.
reviewed
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Massandra Palace
A cutesy hunting lodge built to resemble a French chateau, the turreted Massandra Palace was completed by Tsar Alexander III in 1889. It’s better known, however, for what it became: Stalin’s summer dacha.
reviewed
