| First mentioned in the 21st century as the Polovstan city of
Dzhalita, it later became known as Healita under the control of the Genoese in
the 14th century. After a 15th –century earthquake it was
repopulated by Greeks, Armenians and Tatars, with frequent Cossack attacks from
the north. In the late 18th century Crimea came under Russian
control, and Yalta became the Empire’s classiest Black Sea resort when Tsar
Alexander II made nearby Livadia a summer residence. Before the revolution the
coast was peppered with aristocratic estates, and artistic figures such as
Tolstoy, Chekhov and Rakhmaninov spent much time here.
The setting is spectacular, a narrow cypress-strwn strip between the Crimean
Mountains and the Black Sea, reminiscent in different ways of Cornwall, the
Costa del Sol, Windermere and the French Riviera. Shielded from north wings,
temperatures only just dip below freezing in winter and are several degrees
warmer than Kiev and Moscow in summer. People bathe from June to October – by
which time they can usually look up to snow on the peaks above.
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