Yalta is at the bottom of the Crimean Peninsula, a place squeezed in the wringer of history for ages -- but today, an autonomous republic within the Ukraine. It's quite Russian in language and outlook, but Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev gave it the Ukraine in 1954.
Arriving near sunset after sailing north on the Black Sea all day, we found ourselves in the middle of the show on the Yalta Promenade -- in fact, we were the show...
...as the crowd came to see and be seen -- and photograph and be photographed.
Yalta feted us with a fireworks display...
...soon the spirit of the Yalta promenade infected some of our younger passengers.
Yalta is pretty much a beach at the foot of the Crimean Mountains which hold back the Pontic Steppe. Russian Czars built their summer estates here and the Soviets made it a recreation area for the proletariat who had few vacation options given the travel restrictions. The recently refurbished sea promenade is quite lively in the summer.
In front of the Crimean mountains, Yalta's skyline suggests the complexities and contradictions of the Modern Ukraine. Here a resurgent Greek Orthodox Alexander Nevsky Cathedral raises its gilded onion domes...
...only to compete for vertical hegemony with building cranes and rising apartments ...
Whatever happened to those pedestrian concrete Soviet apartment blocks?
Tourism is the prime driver of the Yalta economy with more recreational venues on the way.
Today Russia's new Zillionaires have a lot of global recreational options and Yalta suffers from its lost monopoly on sun and beach. Apparently some of the nouveaux riches still feel empowered to park their yachts on the sidewalks.
Vladimir Lenin is not sure what to think about all this capitalist hustle and bustle as he watches over the petit-bourgeoisie promenade including...
...the very large and in-your-face beachfront McDonald's...
... which provides us with photographic proof of The End of History. Gravitas or gravy -- the Yalta Promenade has it all -- and someday our grandchildren will ask if Lenin wrote songs with McCartney.
But we found History to be Not Quite Ended. Here, like a black cat, a warship crosses our path in the Black Sea (probably from its home harbor in nearby Sevastopol) on its way to the Georgian conflict just to our east. We had arrived in Istanbul two weeks earlier when a terrorist attack took nearly 200 causalities. Lenin, whose brother was shot for being a terrorist, took a different path to power -- and forced a newly-independent Georgia to join the Soviet Union. (Thanks to our cruise director John Frick for this picture).
Yalta has many lavish estates but our first visit was to a fairly humble Yaltan, physician, dramatist, and master of the short story -- the 19th-century Russian realist Anton Chekhov.
The son of a serf, Chekhov worked his way through medical school in Moscow as a journalist and writer -- while supporting the rest of his family. He quickly mastered the 1000 word comic sketches, preceding Woody Allen's New Yorker career by nearly a century. In his 20s, he was publishing over 100 pieces a year -- and coughing up blood.
This physician began to suffer lung hemorrhages from his tuberculosis, and built this villa in Yalta in 1897 to escape the harsh Moscow winters. About this time, his dramas were becoming popular and he married an actress who often appeared in them. But during the winter, she stayed in Moscow to perform while he came here to write.
The first floor of the home is open and its about what one would expect a writer to have. While popular, Chekhov was not a good money manager and often sold the rights to his works for bargain sums.
Many of his famous dramas were written here in Yalta, perhaps at this desk. This period saw the creation Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.
Chekhov died of his tuberculosis in 1904 at age 44. There's not a whole lot to see here other than this sculpture edging the parking lot. The garden is pleasant and so we'll fill the time with gratuitous flower shots.
chekhov had birch and other central russian species transplanted here in his garden in Yalta
No cherries in this orchard, but Chekhov would invite a fellow Yalta Realist named Leo Tolstoy.
Had Tolstoy died as young as Chekhov, there would be no Anna Karenina. This was a garden for early bloomers.
Next we ventured to a town about 11 miles from Yalta called Alupka. It's famous for this building, the summer palace of prince Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov, the governor when this area once known as "New Russia."
The palace fronts the sea with an elaborate Arabic entrance which we will see in a few pictures. This is the Scotch Gothic/Moorish land entrance.
Guidebooks consider this to be built in Scottish Baronial Style by English architect Edward Blore. Blore used local stone (which resembles the Crimean mountains which here crawl to the northern edge of the Black Sea. The treatment is more Moslem Gothic with chimneys mimicking minarets and crenelations suggesting abstract Arab tents. We'll see more of this Englishman's view of the way Sultans lived when we get to the sea entrance.
Inside the palace decor is a bit heavy with a lot of wood on ceiling...
...and some Escher-inspired floors.
Besides the Prince, this palace had another distinguished tenant (but only for a week). This one was a knight, Sir Winston Churchill.
The place has a Churchillian feel to it with lots of carved wood wrought iron. Churchill stayed here during the Yalta Conference. He was trying to export democracy to the countries on the fringes of Russia. He pretty much failed in that effort, but later got to coin the phrase "the Iron Curtain," as poetic revenge. (It's no "axis of evil" but you've got to start somewhere). What would Pushkin say?
Things lighten up a little at "the blue room" ...complete with blue wallpaper...
...ceiling...
...and vases
Across from the blue room we see this ornate piano (note the floor).
A few Arabian motifs began to crop up as we walked through the palace (but somewhat unexpectedly since the palace was built (1830-1848) between two wars with the Ottomans where Prince Vorontsov performed admirably.
An interior garden features exquisitely carved marbles. During the war, most of the contents and some of the decorative carvings were moved into hiding. The Russians had just recaptured Crimea from the Germans when the Yalta Conference began, so its unlikely Sir Winston got to see these.
The palace became a museum after being confiscated from Vorontsov's heirs after the revolution. After the war, it was again commissioned as a museum in 1956; these sculptures may not have belonged to the Prince. They are much more delicate than his heavy wood panels, floors, and ceilings.
The dining room was the first interior area to be built (1830-1834). It's massive and woody...
...with carved built-ins...
...and ceilings...
...and decorative but somewhat sparse furnishings ...
...and this carved marble and ceramic fireplace, hopefully not much used as this is a summer palace.
The billiard room was added adjacent to the dining room several years later (1830-1834).
Another view of the large dining room
The Lion's Terrace completes the elaborate main entrance which seems to hover at the top of a staircase from the Black Sea. It features this Arabic inspired dome with calligraphy protected by Giovanni Bonnani's lion.
I brought my pride here as well.
More lions guard the steps to the sea.
The south entrance.
The palace shares earth tones with the Crimean mountains which provided some of its stones, a volcanic rock similar to basalt called dolerite.
The lions were added in 1848 to complete the palace.
This garden is right in front of the lion's terrace; however, the gardens of the palace (now a park) are extensive and include 4 lakes over nearly 100 acres.
The view as you climb the stairs for your dinner party after exiting you yacht on the Black Sea...
...and the east side. Just what architectural style is this? Perhaps Summer Vorontsovian.
We ate lunch in another Crimean spa town called Gaspra across from the Disneyesque-Gothic 1911 construction called the Swallow's Nest. It's near Charax, the largest Roman military site excavated in the Crimea. Russian architect Leonid Sherwood designed this for a Baron made rich by Azerbaijani oil wells. It survived a Richter scale 6-7 earthquake, but the cliff beneath it was so damaged that the castle closed for many years. It's a restaurant now but we ate at...
...a place called Yelana which had a view of the Swallow's Nest as well as of its own Art Nouveau decor.
After lunch, we visited the grandaddy of summer palaces -- Livadia, built for the Tsars just before their world came to an end. Unlike the Scottish-Moorish summer Vorontsovsky Palace that we had seen that morning, this was built much faster (17 months) and with an Italian touch. Note the Florentine tower at right.
Each side of the palace has a different facade. This one features much carved marble...
...including a sad lion who is clearly not in the same league as his marble colleagues at the Vorontsovsky Palace...
...an elaborately carved portico...
...and this neo-Renaissance ceiling.
A stool awaits you, but if you can read Russian, you can't sit here.
More neo-Renaissance touches.
The palace has long been a museum but it's not clear what was here during the Tsar's days. (The place was built only a few years before the revolution.)
The front entrance hallsitting room is distinguished by this carved marble fireplace with mansard-roof-like top...
But is best known for this table where Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill horse-traded during the week-long Yalta Conference in February 1945. The gentleman in green at center is Jay Winter, prize-winning historian of this period which ended what he calls the “European Civil War.”
Plenary sessions were held in this Italianate dining room, the largest space in this palace of 116 rooms. Conference topics discussed here include the composition of the security council of the soon-to-be United Nations and the free elections in eastern European countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Daylight through the high-arched windows illuminates well; at night, the 280 light bulbs are hidden in the cornice come into play.
This marble is of Penelopa by German sculptor E. Bruger which came from a previous palace on this site that was torn down. The Tsar wanted a new palace because he was unsettled by the fact that his father had died in the old one.
This very Italian Renaissance room has a stuccoed ceiling held aloft by four marble columns.
Most of the furnishings of the palace were lost after the war when it was turned into a sanatorium for the Proletariat. The American delegation, led by a very sick Franklin Roosevelt, stayed here during the conference. This was his antechamber. Love that phone!
But I love the ceiling more...
...and the chandelier in Roosevelt's bedroom...
...which allowed him to stare up from his bed at lyres.
More of those great Livadia Palace vases
The fireplace in Roosevelt's bedroom.
This is the English-style Billiards room -- not another dining room.
It's ceiling is paper-mache but mimicks wood pretty well.
There are two patios, each in a different style. The larger one is Italian. One of the most famous posed photos in history was taken here...
...do those columns look familiar? Roosevelt would die two months later -- and looks it. Stalin got the other two to agree to meet here because he could not travel because of his health. Stalin live for 9 more years. Many more on his watch did not -- he started his "genetically cleansing" of the Crimea two months later.
A much smaller garden is the Arabian inspired atrium.
The upstairs rooms were private for the royal family. This seems to have been the office of the Tsar Nicholas II.
This table is small by Yalta standards. But when one man can rule a country, you don't need much more.
The furnishings are lovely but probably not from the Tsar's day as most of the contents of this palace were lost during the 20th century disruptions.
Another vase...
...with a classical theme, of course.
A number of pictures of the royal family hang on the halls of their private living area.
The private dining room -- much smaller than where the Yalta Conference held plenary sessions. Forgive the distortion of the software, please.
A photo of the children of Tsar Nicholas II all of whom were murdered with him in secret.
The walls have a few drawings, one would expect, done by the Tsar's family. They are poignant but not museum quality.
The glass doors and transoms are superb:
Just before the exit (and gift shop, of course, as capitalism has come to the Ukraine), we encountered this strange hallway.
We ended this long day at an organ concert held in a newly revamped space that was originally built as the power plant for the Livadia Palace. This was the first of its kind to use sliding formwork for pouring reinforced concrete.
While the much larger palace was designed by a local Yalta architect, the power house was done by the court architect Gleb Gushin.
The power plant was stripped of its equipment in 1927 and used a club. In 1945 it was put back into service as a power station for the Yalta Conference but then moved onto other lives such as being a warehouse. The conversion to a concert hall caused it to acquire stain glass and decorative molding that it lacked even in the Tsar's day.
Recently a room was added to house an organ, the largest in the Ukraine with more than 4600 pipes ranging from less than an inch to almost 20 feet in length.
Here Elana Keil entertains us with Vivaldi, Bach, Schubert and Reger from the 4 keyboards and row of pedals. She has 230 buttons to push as well.
Several organists are on staff. We won't say that she pulled out all the stops to entertain us. Instead, we'll have a quiz: what is the largest CHURCH organ in the world.
The builder of this and several area organs (and restorer of the hall), Vladimir Khromchenko, is making Livadia a key center for a revival in organ building for the former Soviet Union. And the largest church organ: of all places, it's in the Cadet Chapel at West Point with five times as many pipes as the one in Livadia. Contrary to what pundits suggest, we are winning in some aspects of the cold war -- or is that just a pipe dream?
