Viamigo

DAY 1 Simferopol – Sevastopol – Yalta

Arrival to Simferopol. Located on an inlet of the Black Sea, Sevastopol is today a naval base and seaport with some 400 monuments and sites of historical interest. For many with a particular interest in the Crimean campaign the highlight of this tour is likely to be the time spent at the Panorama Museum. Lying near the entrance to the port of Sevastopol are the ruins of Chersonesus, a Greek colony founded in 422 BC. Later it passed into Roman, Byzantine and Genoese control and it was from here, considered to be the birthplace of the Russian Orthodox Church, that the Christian faith began to spread all over Ukraine. Next to the shoreline can be seen the homes and streets of this once thriving community.

Transfer to Yalta.

Check-in and dinner at the hotel.

DAY 2 Yalta

Breakfast at the hotel. Your first visit this morning will be to Livadia Palace, the summer home of the last of the Russian Tsars, Nikolai II, and in 1945 home to the Yalta Conference, where Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met to re-draw the map of Europe at the end of the war. It breathes the history of the last 150 years. The palace buildings and extensive gardens overlooking the sea and the bay of Yalta reflect the influence of the original architect, Ippolito Antonovich Monighetti, who was sent from Moscow to Livadia after the estate, was bought for Tsar Alexander II in 1861. Big Livadia palace was built in 1911 by famous Ukrainian architect Krasnov in style of the Italian Revival. Continue to Chekhov house museum after that, garden and exhibition hall with innumerable editions of his works.

You will be transferred to a fairy –tale Swallow’s Nest castle (1912) for lunch.

In the afternoon you are invited to visit Alupka, the most exotic palace park complex on the whole coast. Designed and built between 1828 and 1846 by English architects for the English-educated Count Vorontsov the palace is a bizarre combination of Scottish castle on its landward side, and Arabic fantasy facing the sea. The tour ends with wine-testing at Alupka. Dinner at the hotel.

DAY 3 Yalta – Simferopol

Breakfast at the hotel followed by check out and departure transfer to Simferopol.