Palace in Alupka

Summer, sea, scent-laden wind blowing from mountains, rave of colours in fruit bazaars, silence of morning parks, splendours of royal palaces: this is Greater Yalta. Only when you come will you understand why Russian Tsars sent rebels into exile to the Caucasus while they themselves went on vacation to the southern shore of Crimea.

Greater Yalta is simply a paradise on earth worth discovering. Its boundary stretches for 70 kilometres on the Black Sea coast, mountains, and beaches from Foros to Gurzuf. Its ‘settlements’ are 170 resorts and sanatoriums. Its calling card is the sun shining here 2,250 hours a year, same as in Nice. Its border checkpoint is the 150-year-old Baidarsky Gates, 46 km from Yalta. The panoramic view which opens before your eyes through the arch of this gate to Greater Yalta will stay in your memory forever. As will the elegant silhouette of the Church of the Resurrection built in 1892 on top of the Red Cliff rising from the sea as a 400-metre pedestal. Or, perhaps, the palace of a “tea king” Alexander Kuznetsov located in a shady park. Or the road running along Berehove (Kastropol) with the 120-metre Iphigenia cliff and Devil’s Ladder pass. But let us start our trip from Yalta.

Yalta

Our departure point is mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records: to get to Yalta from the Simferopol Rail Terminal you take the longest trolleybus route in the world (86 km)! After that, directions are simple: all roads lead to the shore where the heart of this 80-thousand resorts city beats. Palm trees, sea waves, seagulls, mountains, music everywhere: it seems like a picture from a tourist brochure come alive.

If you are here for a cultural experience, welcome to the city theatre. Here, in 1900, Anton Chekhov was watching his own plays staged by Konstantin Stanislavski. Chekhov and Yalta have a long romance. You will see it when visiting the writer’s dacha-museum where he lived for five years and wrote his Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.

To continue with classics, visit the Lesya Ukrainka Literature-Memorial Museum. The poetess often visited Yalta where she translated Byron’s Cain and Shakespeare’s Macbeth into Ukrainian.

Those of you tired from the glamour of the embankment will surely be attracted by the old narrow streets where fishermen once lived. A funicular runs from the seashore over the city. A half hour in a two-seat cabin gives an opportunity to peek into Yalta residents’ windows for UAH20. When you get to the observation site above the city, do not forget to take a lot of pictures.

Children will surely love the delphinarium, and architecture buffs will want to see the Church of the Immaculate Conception at Pushkinska Str. 25, built in 1898-1906 from a design by Russian Imperial Court Architect Nikolai Krasnov. During Soviet times, this place was turned into a museum of local lore, but today, masses are celebrated and organ concerts are held in the church. By the way, quiet, pedestrian Pushkinska Street is Yalta’s version of Montmartre. The city’s other treasures include Alexander Nevsky’s Cathedral (1891-1902) at Sadova Str. 2 which looks like a carved chest and a former Moresque palace of the Bukhara Emir which is now Yalta Sanatorium (1903).