Black Sea Coast, Yalta & Novi Svet

Although Yalta (Ялта) – see the separate slide show below – is the most well-known of Crimea's Black Sea resorts and the destination for many Ukrainian and Russian tourists, it is but one of many scenic areas along the Black Sea coast.

The rocky coastline near the town of Gurzuf (Гурзуф), a few miles east of Yalta, is particularly attractive and well worth the detour. To the west of Yalta, one finds Gaspra (Гаспра) and its miniature castle called Swallow's Nest, built on a rock outcropping jutting into the Black Sea. It is a restaurant and very popular backdrop for photographs.

Not far from Gaspra, in Livadia (Лівадія, Ливадия), stands the former summer palace of Czar Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia. In a beautiful setting overlooking the sea, the magnificent palace was also the site of the 1945 Yalta conference in which Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met to plan the post-war future of Europe.

In nearby Alupka (Алупка) stands the palace of the former Governor General of Crimea, Prince Mikhail Vorontsov. Vorontsov Palace, completed in 1848, is an unusual blend of Tudor and Arabic architectural styles and is set in a lovely park overlooking the Black Sea.

In addition to the manmade attractions, the southern coast offers Crimea's highest waterfall, Uchan-Su (Учан-Су), which plunges nearly 100 meters, plus the spectacular vistas from Ai-Petrie, at 1,500 meters (about 5,000 feet) one of the highest points in Crimea. The energetic and the daring are welcome to climb Ai-Petrie, but for the rest of us there is a cable car that quickly and easily scales the cliffs.