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Yalta is a city in Crimea, southern Ukraine, on the north coast of the Black Sea. The city is located on the site of an ancient Greek colony, said to have been founded by Greek sailors who were looking for a safe shore (γιαλος – yalos in Greek) on which to land. It is situated on a shallow bay facing south towards the Black Sea, surrounded by wooded mountains. It enjoys a warm Mediterranean climate with many vineyards and orchards in the vicinity. Swallow’s Nest, one of the romantic castles of Neo-Gothic style near Yalta; built in 1912 by the order of a German baron Stengel according to a project of a Russian architect A.Sherwood.
The existence of Yalta was first recorded in the 12th century by an Arab geographer, who described it as a Byzantine port and fishing settlement. It became part of a network of Genoese trading colonies on the Crimean coast in the 14th century, when it was known as Etalita or Galita. Yalta and the rest of Crimea was captured by the Ottoman Empire in 1475, which made it a semi-independent subject territory under the rule of the Crimean Khanate. Yalta was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1783, along with the rest of Crimea, sparking the Russo-Turkish War, 1787-1792. In the 19th century, the town became a fashionable resort for the Russian aristocracy and gentry. The writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov spent their summers there; Yalta is the setting for Chekhov’s short story The Lady With the Pet Dog. The town was also closely associated with royalty. In 1889 Tsar Alexander III built the Massandra Palace a short distance to the north of Yalta and Nicholas II built the Livadia Palace in the south of the town in 1911. During the 20th century Yalta was the principal holiday resort of the Soviet Union. In 1920, Lenin issued a decree “On the Use of Crimea for the Medical Treatment of the Working People” which endorsed the region’s transformation from a fairly exclusive resort area into a recreation facility for tired proletarians. Numerous workers’ sanatoria were constructed in and around Yalta.