Many resorts of Crimea possess a few medical factors: balneological, mud and climatic. Most resort hotels and sanatoriums are concentrated on such popular resorts, as Alushta, Yalta, Gurzuf, pike Perch, Koktebel' and Feodosiya. An unique climate is rendered by the salutary affecting all organism on the whole, helping him be restored, strengthening the immune system and improving circulation of blood, and mineral waters and mud procedures treat an allergy, serdechno-sosudistye diseases and many other illnesses.

Except for treatment and rest at the seaside, Crimea offers the interesting tourist programs: pedestrian hikes, marine walks, to the excursion to the ancient city Khersones, Tsar's burial mound, in "Valley of ghosts", visit of medieval "spelaean cities" and, certainly, famous summer residence "Swallow's nest".

Tourist companies, offerings rest and treatment in the sanatoriums of Crimea on any taste and purse.

Crimea lies in the same latitude as Venice, and its summer temperatures are similar to those on the French and Portuguese Algarve mediterranean coasts. Although it's so much further east, it avoids the high humidity experienced by parts of mainland Greece and Turkey in the summer months because of its position as a near-island in the Black Sea. Fresh sea breezes ensure that the high summer temperatures don't become uncomfortable.

Crimea has two seasons - the warm / hot season, which lasts from May through to October, and the cool season running from November to April. Rainfall is light , averaging around 1 inch (38 mm) per month in summer and 3 inches (83 mm) in the cool season.

In the warm / hot season temperatures rival those of the mediterranean resorts and the average sea temperature in summer is 23ºC. Swimming begins in earnest in May and continues through to the end of October. As you travel west along the coast to Yalta and Sevastopol, the climate stays hot but the landscape becomes greener, with mountain forests where the trees and animals have conservation status. The further east you go, towards Sudak and Feodosia, the more rugged the terrain becomes, although softened in places by vineyards which provide the grapes for the many Crimean wines. Eastern Crimea is famous for the Kara-dag nature reserve, a wild area of volcanic mountains where rock formations boast names such as the Devil's Finger. Here it can be noticeably hotter and drier than in the leafier western areas. The Crimean coast is shielded from the north winds by the mountains, and as a result usually has mild winters. Cool season temperatures average around 7ºC and it is rare for the weather to drop below freezing except in the mountains, where there is usually snow. Flowers are already appearing in March and by April the warm weather is on the way back.

Black Sea.

As you look out across the Black Sea from the top of Ai-Petri mountain, you may wonder why such an iridescent blue sea is called the black sea. Nobody really knows - it can be pretty stormy in winter, and it's thought that the name was given to it by sailors and pirates who were struck by its dark appearance when the sky turned leaden with storm clouds. It has had other names in the past. The ancient Greeks knew it as the Scythian Sea, after the tribes who held its shores at the time. Shipwrecked sailors could generally expect no mercy from the Scythians, who plundered the wrecks and made wine goblets out of sailors' skulls. The Greeks also called it Pontos Axenos - the inhospitable sea - until they settled in Crimea, after which they changed their minds and called it Pontos Euxenos: the hospitable sea. Beaches

Crimea has 517 km of clean beaches - mostly small pebbles although there is black volcanic sand at Morskoye and Sudak in the east and silver sand at Yevpatoria in the west. Many beaches are public, and the private ones owned by hotels and sanatoria are usually open to non-patrons at a price of around 3 hryvnias (£0.40p or $0.56 cents) per day. There are naturist beaches near Koktebel in the east.

The main tourist beaches have opportunities for pedalo, jet-skiing, yachting and speed-boating, sea fishing, para-gliding, flights in microlite aircraft and a range of other pursuits, in addition to sea cruises along the coast. Wind-surfing is still developing and good quality boards and sails may not be easily available, but there is a windsurfing club in Feodosia at the eastern end of the peninsula.

The road which runs along the coast from Feodosia to Sevastopol in the west is one of the most beautiful drives in the world. For much of the journey you're looking out over the sea from the mountains which slope down to the shoreline and the views are spectacular.

The rocky Black Sea bays are ideal for scuba diving, and there are many centres along the coast. Balaklava is a favourite, where there is a large underwater reef. From there you can also dive to the underwater ruins of Khersoness, where part of the Byzantine city was swamped by rising sea levels.

Marine life.

Playwright Anton Chekhov's dacha at Gursuf looks out over a small bay where he used to watch the dolphins. Apart from Bottlenose and other species of dolphin, the sea has about 180 species of fish, including tuna, anchovy, herring, grey mullet, mackerel, and the famous white sturgeon, which you will find on the menu of most good Crimean restaurants.

There are also some seals in the Black Sea, but their numbers are declining rapidly. Bottlenose dolphins are in demand from amusement parks and dolphinaria because of their playful acrobatics and receptivity to training, and about 120 live Black Sea dolphins were traded internationally between 1990 and 2001. Black Sea dolphins are genetically distinct from those found in the Mediterranean and Atlantic and an attempt was made by Georgia in 2002 to use the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species to outlaw all further trade in the bottlenose to prevent it from being wiped out. The proposal for an outright ban was rejected but Georgia later succeeded in getting the Black Sea dolphins placed on a list that restricts trade through annual quotas - and in this case the quota is zero.

If you swim in the Black Sea at night, especially in August, you may notice that the waves have a strange luminous quality . This is phosphorescence of the sea, caused by plankton interacting in the water.

Noah's Flood

The Black Sea is very deep (1,271m at the centre) but it's less salty than most oceans.

It began life as a fresh water lake about 22 thousand years ago. Then, about seven to nine thousand years ago, global warming melted glaciers and the polar ice-caps, sea levels rose and eventually the Mediterranean overflowed through the Bosporus, turning the lake into the Black Sea. Many archeologists think that this catastrophic event was in fact the Noah's Flood of the Bible.

The sea is unique in having two layers, an oxygenated upper layer, about 200m deep, teeming with life, and a `dead' lower layer, where until recently nothing was thought to be able to survive. The lower layer may have formed when the Mediterranean salt-water flooded in. Denser than the fresh lake water it displaced, it would have plunged straight to the bottom, leaving a diluted mix of fresh and salt water at the top. Over thousands of years great rivers like the Danube and the Dnipro poured organic material into the new sea. Due to a lack of vertical currents, the inrush of organic matter was too much for the bacteria that would normally have decomposed it aerobically, and the result was a loss of oxygen in favour of hydrogen sulphide. This means that the lower layer, 87% of the Black Sea's volume, is an almost sterile zone of water impregnated with hydrogen sulphide.

Another peculiarity of the Black Sea is the bi-directional current where it flows through the Bosporus straits on its way to the Mediterranean. The surface current flows westwards through the straits into the Sea of Marmaris, but there is a deep current which flows simultaneously in the opposite direction, back into the Black Sea. Methane-eating life form

Recently, German scientists have discovered corals made by micro-organisms processing methane and sulphates in total darkness at the bottom of the Black Sea. These corals are now believed to be the world's oldest life form. Traditional views of early life on earth have centred on plants which began converting carbon dioxide into oxygen some three billion years ago. The newly discovered organisms live on methane and are thought to have originated four billion years ago. The German scientists believe they could prove useful in ridding the earth of excess methane, the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide.

Food

Crimean food is tasty and very varied, reflecting the Ukrainian, Russian and Tatar `ingredients' which combine to form Crimean culture and society. Some dishes have already made a name for themselves abroad - for example, you're likely to be familiar with Chicken Kiev, Beef Stroganoff and Borshch from the pre-cooked versions on your supermarket shelves.

But these are just the tip of the iceberg. You should try Pelmeny - delicious meat-filled dumplings, or the sweet equivalent Vareniki with a cherry or sweet cottage cheese filling. Or Tatar Lagmaan soup, or Shashlyk - kebabs which rival their Greek or Turkish counterparts in marinade and flavour.

You'll find restaurants and cafes to suit every conceivable taste and pocket, from the cheap Stolovaya (self-service cafeteria) or the pavement snack kiosk to the high class Restoran for a candle-lit dinner. Apart from restaurants serving Crimean-style dishes, there are those which specialise in Tatar or Georgian food. And because you're by the sea, there's no shortage of restaurants serving really tasty seafood and fish dishes.

If you want to be really adventurous, why not visit a Tatar eatery and try charcoal-grilled sheeps' testicles (delicious - tastes like a cross between chicken and kidney).Or if the very idea makes you feel queasy, you can opt for something familiar instead like a Chinese restaurant - or even MacDonalds (there's one in Yalta and one in Simferopol).

On the other hand, you may prefer to cook your own meals. There are plenty of well-stocked food supermarkets like Gastronom, but the best place to go is the market. There are several in Yalta, one specialising in vegetables (but also selling other things like bread), one specialising in groceries - all sorts of household goods, bottled drinks and canned food - and a couple of `paper' markets selling books, magazines and stationery. A trip to the vegetable market is a must, just to see the amazing variety of colourful foods on display and savour the atmosphere.

Wines

You may remember seeing this headline a couple of years ago:

This bottle just happened to come from the collection of 19th century wines at the Massandra cellars on the outskirts of Yalta. Bought on the telephone by a private collector on October 17 2001, the sherry was a deep golden colour, with an intense nose of raisins and nuts and was one of the few surviving bottles of its period in the world. The sale price set a new world record.

Although your holiday budget may not stretch to this kind of shopping, a wine-tasting at the Massandra cellars is a must for any visitor - whether you're a connoisseur or just someone who knows a good taste when they meet one.

Crimea makes a wide range of wines, including dry reds and whites, but the regional speciality is sweet wines such as madeira, sherry, muscatel and port.

Spirits

Vodka translates literally as `little water' - an affectionate diminutive of the word for water - voda. It's made by blending grain spirit with demineralised water and filtering it through charcoal. Traditionally drunk neat in one swallow from small vodka glasses, it 's the ideal warmer for an icy Siberian winter - but be wary of its effects after a day in the sun! There are around 50 Ukrainian manufacturers of vodka - some of the best known names include Nemiroff, Knyazhyi Grad, Ivanoff and Kozak. Apart from the pure and largely tasteless variety, there are many varieties flavoured with walnut, plum, apricot and so on. And there are speciality vodkas made with honey or hot peppers - or both. Take a bottle of the hot pepper vodka home if you really want to put fire in the bellies of your party guests!

While vodka is popular throughout Ukraine, there is a marked preference for cognac in Crimea, because it's a wine-growing region.

There are some excellent brands such as Ai-Danil and Tavria. Ukrainian cognac tends to be mellow and soft on the palate.

The Ancient World

Crimea was known in ancient times as Tauris (Tavrida in Russian), home to the tribes who took Iphigenia prisoner in Euripides' play Iphigenia in Tauris. The Tauric tribes were absorbed first by Cimmerian and then Scythian invaders, who were later pushed back from the coast by Greek colonists in the 6th century BC.

The Greeks

Eastern Crimea became the centre of the Greek Bosporan kingdom, with Panticapaeum (today the town of Kerch) as its capital, and a major ports at Theodosia (now Feodosia). In the west, Greek colonists from Heracleia founded the cities of Khersoness (outside present-day Sevastopol) and Kerkinitida (now Yevpatoria). The Greeks never succeeded in taking over the whole peninsula, and had to defend themselves against frequent attacks by the Scythians and then by the even more warlike Sarmatians.(also known as the Alans). Nevertheless, the peninsula became the major source of wheat for ancient Greece. Little remains to link Yalta with the Greeks apart from the town's name. The legend is that Greek sailors were blown off course at night on the Black sea, and completely lost their way in sea mists. At dawn the mist lifted and when the lookout caught sight of the green Crimean coast he shouted `Yalos! Yalos!' (`shore, shore') . They named the place where they landed Yalta. Many Greeks remained in Crimea after the Bosporan kingdom fell to the Huns and the Goths, and Khersoness became part of the Byzantine Empire. In 965 AD there were 16,000 Crimean Greeks in the joint Byzantine and Kievan Rus army which invaded Bulgaria. Orthodox monasteries continued to function, with strong links with the monasteries on Mount Athos in northern Greece.

The Byzantine Empire

The Romans arrived in Crimea in the 1st century AD and established protectorates and naval bases at Khersoness and in the Bosporan kingdom in the east of the peninsula. Roman legionaries were also stationed at fortresses built in strategic locations along the coast, such as the Ai-Todor promontory near Yalta. They lost their Bosporan acquisitions to the Goths in the 4th century, but Khersoness became part of the Byzantine empire and remained under the control of Constantinople until the 13th century, when it was overrun by part of Chingiz Khan's Golden Horde.

The medieval world

The Tatars

For centuries Crimea had been the subject of a tug of war between the Byzantine and Khazar empires, Kievan Rus (the fore-runner of modern Russia) and nomadic tribes such as the Cumans and the Kypchaks. Then in 1223 a new force appeared on the scene. Chingiz Khan's Golden Horde entered Crimea, sweeping all before it. Originating in current day Mongolia, the Tatars were a collection of nomadic tribes who had united under Chingiz Khan's banner, and gathered Turkic people to swell their army as they rode and marched across Central Asia and into Eastern Europe. Renowned for his ruthlessness, the Great Khan's success also lay in his ability to impose discipline and order in place of old tribal rivalries. He introduced laws forbidding, among other things, blood feuds, theft, the bearing of false witness, sorcery, disobedience of a royal command, and bathing in running water. The last was a reflection of the Tatars' animist belief system. They worshipped Mongke Koko Tengre, `The Eternal Blue Sky', the almighty spirit controlling the forces of good and evil, and believed that powerful spirits lived in fire, running water and the wind.

Crimea became part of the huge Tatar empire, stretching from China in the east to beyond Kyiv and Moscow in the west. Because of its sheer size, it was impossible for Chingiz Khan to govern his empire from Mongolia, and the Crimean Khans enjoyed a considerable amount of autonomy. Their first Crimean capital was at Qirim (now Stary Krym), and remained there until the 15th century when it moved to Bakhchisarai. It is during the Tatar period that the peninsula's old name of Tavrida fell gradually into disuse, to be replaced by the name Krym, derived from the name of the Tatar capital.

The breadth of the Tatar empire, and the power of the great Khan meant that for a while merchants and other travellers under his protection could journey east and west in comparative safety. The Tatars concluded trading agreements with the Genoese and the Venetians and Sudak and Kaffa (Feodosia) prospered in spite of the taxes levied on them. Marco Polo landed at Sudak on his way to the court of Kublai Khan in 1275.

Like all great empires, the Tatar empire was influenced by the cultures it encountered during its expansion. In 1262 the Egyptian Mamluk Sultan Baybars, who had been born in Qirim, wrote to one of the Tatar Khans suggesting that the Tatars should convert to Islam. The oldest mosque in Crimea still stands in Stary Krim, built in1314 by Tatar Khan Uzbek.

The Ottoman Empire

In 1475 the Ottoman Turks overran Crimea, taking the Crimean Khan Mengli Girei prisoner at Kaffa and releasing him to rule Crimea as their representative. Thereafter the Crimean Khans were appointed by Constantinople, although they still had considerable autonomy in day to day matters. Over the next three hundred years the Tatars remained the dominant force in Crimea, and a thorn in the side of the developing Russian empire. The Tatar Khans began building the great palace which stands at Bakhchisarai in the 15th century.

The 18th and 19th Centuries

Imperial Russia

In the 18th century there was still a sizeable Greek population in Crimea, but in 1778, only a few years before Catherine the Great finally took Crimea from the Ottoman Empire, 18,000 Crimean Greeks, along with other christians tired of living under Tatar rule successfully petitioned the empress for permission to move to Russia and emigrated to the shores of the sea of Asov, where they founded the city of Mariupol.

Fresh Greek settlers arrived soon afterwards, however, when the empress gave them land in Crimea in recognition of their services in helping Russia against the Ottoman Empire. Known as the `archipelago Greeks' because they came mainly from the Greek islands, they also provided soldiers for the Balaklava battalion which later reinforced Russian authority in the area. Some of the officers of this Greek regiment built substantial estates at Oreanda and Livadia near Yalta.

Catherine the Great took Crimea from the Ottoman Turks in 1783 and also established protectorship over Georgia, giving Russia access to the Black Sea coast from two sides. In 1787 the 58 year old empress travelled from St Petersburg to Crimea, with a retinue of 2,300 people. She was met by 12,000 Tatar horsemen in ceremonial dress who escorted her to the Khan's Palace at Bakhchisarai. A stone plaque was placed there to commemorate the occasion and can still be seen today. From there she travelled to Sevastopol, where she met Prince Potemkin, her governor-general (later rewarded with the title Prince of Tavrida) and saw the Black Sea fleet at anchor. She then travelled on to Akh-Mechet (present-day Simferopol), Stariy Krim and Feodosia. Catherine was too shrewd a politician to be indulging in tourism, although her letters suggest that she enjoyed much of the journey. She was here to make a point - that Crimea was now part of the great Russian empire. From the Khan's Palace she wrote: "This acquisition means an end to fear of the Tatars...This thought gives me great consolation, and I lie down to sleep today, having seen with my own eyes, that far from causing harm, it has been of the greatest advantage to my empire".

But soon afterwards the Ottoman Empire again declared war on Russia, and it took four years before the Turks capitulated after a series of naval defeats at the hands of the Black Sea fleet, and accepted the reality of Crimea's transfer from the Ottoman to the Russian empire.

Catherine then set about consolidating her new acquisition. She realised that the only way that Russia would hold on to Crimea in the long term was to change the population balance in favour of those sympathetic to the Russian cause. Not only Russians, but also substantial numbers of Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Armenians, and Germans were encouraged by Catherine to settle in Crimea, a process which continued into the 19th century. Some Tatars emigrated to Turkey, although most stayed. By 1863, the immigrants outnumbered the Tatar population.

The Crimean War

The decline of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century led to a complex international power struggle between the major states of europe.

The ostensible cause of the Crimean War was a squabble over custodianship of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, then under Ottoman control. In 1852 the French persuaded the Turks to take the church away from the Greek Orthodox Church and place it in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. Nikolai I of Russia, officially protector of the Orthodox population under Ottoman rule as a result of a treaty made under Catherine the Great, demanded that the right be restored to the Orthodox. When the Turks refused, he ordered Russian troups into Moldavia, then part of the Ottoman empire.

What led Britain and France to come to the Turkish Sultan's aid was not a pious desire to protect the rights of the Catholic Church, but rather the fear that, left unchecked, the Russians would now have an excuse to destroy the ailing Ottoman empire and gain control of the passage from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. In 1854 a large British and French expeditionary force landed at Balaklava, near Sevastopol, the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet, which had inflicted a major defeat on the Turkish fleet soon after hostilities began. The Russians scuttled their fleet in the harbour mouth at Sevastopol to block the entrance, and a lengthy siege began. Battles were fought at various points around the western Crimean coast, including Balaklava, scene of the disastrous charge of the Light Brigade, and Inkerman.

The war was essentially a stalemate, with terrible casualties on both sides. Many more soldiers died of disease than died in battle. Tsar Nikolai I died in 1855, and his successor, Alexander II realised he could not realistically continue the war in the face of growing social discontent at home. The Treaty of Paris ended the war in 1856.

Development of Yalta

In 1825, the Oreanda Estate near Yalta had been bought by the crown as a summer residence for Alexander I. His successor, Nikolai I built a palace there and approved a development plan for the newly designated district of Yalta. The palace was later destroyed by fire but the park remains. In1860, after the end of the Crimean War the Livadia Estate was bought for Alexander II and construction of the magnificent Livadia Palace began. This period also saw the building of other palaces such as Massandra and Alupka. The presence of the royal families attracted aristocrats and rich merchants, bringing investment and prosperity to Yalta and the surrounding area, and turning it into imperial Russia's most fashionable resort.

The nineteenth century saw the introduction of more modern farming methods, including wine-growing influenced by the presence of small German farming communities, and the building of the first vineyards by Russian Counts Golitsyn and Vorontsov. The latter was also responsible for major road-building schemes, such as the road between Yalta and Simferopol.

The 20th century

The 1st World War was disastrous for the last Tsar Nikolai II. Crimea and part of Ukraine were taken by German forces, and heavy losses on the battlefield, combined with food and ammunition shortages, demoralized the Russian army to the point of mutiny. The October 1917 Revolution was as much a response to the war as to general social conditions. Crimea was the scene of fierce fighting between Bolshevik forces and anti-revolutionary White Russian soldiers.

In 1921 Crimea was established as an autonomous Republic for the Crimean Tatars within the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist republic. However, this did not prevent theTatars from suffering severely during Stalin's purges of the nineteen thirties. Another group to suffer were the Greeks, many of whom lost their farms during collectivisation. Greek schools were closed and Greek literature destroyed, as they were labelled as counter-revolutionary because of their tradition of free enterprise, their links with capitalist Greece, and their independent culture.

The 2nd World War brought the return of German forces, who completely occupied the republic after the fall of Sevastopol in 1942, and held it until the spring of 1944. In 1945 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Russian Secretary-General Joseph Stalin chose the Livadia Palace near Yalta as the venue for what became known as the Yalta Conference. The "big three" effectively set the stage for the cold war years which followed, but also began the discussions which led to the formation of the United Nations.

After the end of the war Crimea lost its status as an autonomous republic because of collaboration by significant numbers of Crimean Tatars with the occupying German forces, as a result of the previous mistreatment of Tatars by the Soviet regime. In retribution, in spite of the fact that some 50,000 Tatars had fought on all fronts in the Soviet armed forces, Stalin officially abolished the Crimean Tatars as a nation, and organised the mass deportation of the entire Tatar population - some 220,000 people - to Central Asia, along with 70,000 Crimean Greeks. It was not until 1956, when USSR Premier Nikita Khruschev denounced the Tatar deportation in his speech attacking Stalin's legacy, that there was any official recognition of the terrible wrong done to the Tatar people and others. It took until the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, for Tatar families and members of other deported groups to be allowed to return to Crimea in significant numbers.

During the Soviet era Crimea prospered as a tourist destination, and new sanatoria were built for the workers of the growing industrial state. Holiday makers from all over the Soviet Union relaxed on its beaches, and it became a favorite for tourists from East Germany. The infrastructure improved and manufacturing developed around the ports at Kerch and Sevastopol, and also in the capital, Simferopol. The Russian and Ukrainian populations more than doubled during this period: by 1989, there were 1.6 million Russians and 626,000 Ukrainians living in Crimea.

A Ukrainian by birth, Nikita Khruschev had returned Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. Thirty-seven years later, in 1991, after the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine declared its independence . Because of the majority of Russian-speakers in Crimea, there was a move to return the region to Russia, but this was not successful and Crimea is today an Autonomous Republic within Ukraine.

Language.

Crimea is an autonomous republic within Ukraine. It enjoys this special status as a result of its history. When it became part of the Russian empire in the early 18th century, large numbers of Russians moved to Crimea, attracted by the warm climate and encouraged by Catherine the Great and her successors, who had political reasons for wanting to ensure that their newest acquisition became well and truly Russian. This process continued throughout the 19th and well into the 20th century. The result is that the majority of those now living in Crimea speak Russian as their first language. Most Tatars and Ukrainians living in the region speak Russian as well as their own language. Signs are in Russian, in contrast with the rest of Ukraine, where the Ukrainian language is the norm.

Russian is written in Cyrillic script, which has strong similarities with the Greek alphabet, although there are additional letters to represent Slavonic sounds not found in Greek.

Many younger Crimeans will have learnt English at school, while the older generation are more likely to have learnt some German, reflecting the significant numbers of East german tourists who visited the region during the Soviet era. Today there is a lively interest in learning western european languages, now that the political barriers to travel have disappeared, although the economic barriers still make it too expensive, in practice, for many people to be able to afford a holiday abroad.

Since the re-unification of Germany the number of German visitors has fallen, and restaurant menus, guidebooks and brochures are now beginning to be translated into English, in anticipation of a hoped for increase in visitors from the UK and other EU countries, and also the US, Canada and Australasia.

If you don't speak Russian, here are some tips for coping easily with the language challenge!