South Coast of Crimea by Car: Route through Palaces and Mountains

The South Coast of Crimea is eighty kilometers between Foros and Alushta, squeezed between mountains and sea. Distances here are laughable, but travel time is not: the road winds like a serpent, there is almost nowhere to overtake, and in summer on the Yalta — Alupka section thirty minutes are spent on twelve kilometers.

Hence the main conclusion for the route: do not try to see everything in one day. Three to four days with a base in one place work better than daily moves with suitcases.

Base: Yalta or Alupka

Yalta is more convenient in terms of infrastructure: more accommodation, cafes work year-round, transport runs in all directions. Alupka is quieter and cheaper, but in the evening almost everything closes there.

In Yalta itself the route is short and pedestrian. The Embankment runs along the sea for about one and a half kilometers, and along it the city is read entirely: plane trees, old hotels, cable car to Darsan hill. Off to the side stands the Chekhov House-Museum — the White Dacha, which he built in 1899 and where he wrote "Three Sisters" and "The Cherry Orchard". The house is preserved almost unchanged, down to the arrangement of furniture.

Massandra Palace stands above the city, among the forest. It is the hunting castle of Alexander III in the French style, and it is the only one on the coast where there are almost no queues: you need to drive to it, you cannot walk.

Alupka: Vorontsov Palace and Park

Vorontsov Palace is the main building of the coast. English architect Edward Blore built it for twenty years, from 1828, from local diabase — a stone stronger than granite, which was processed by hand. The northern facade looks like an English Tudor castle, the southern — like an Indian palace with a horseshoe arch. The transition between styles was made intentionally and works to this day.

The Park around it is worth separate time: forty hectares, more than two hundred plant species, stone chaos from natural diabase blocks, ponds with swans and a lion staircase descending to the sea. It is better to walk around it from top to bottom.

From here it is also closest to the Swallow's Nest — a small castle on the forty-meter Aurora cliff, erected in 1912. There is almost nothing to see inside, it is all about the location: the building hangs over the precipice, and after the 1927 earthquake the cliff beneath it had to be reinforced with a concrete slab.

Ai-Petri: Cable Car and Plateau

The Cable Car lifts from the village of Miskhor to the plateau in fifteen minutes, and the last span is almost a kilometer without a single support, the longest unsupported section in Europe at the time of construction. Height difference is more than a thousand meters.

At the top, on Ai-Petri, it is always colder than below, by about ten degrees, and almost always windy. A jacket is needed even in July. The Teeth — limestone remnants up to twelve meters high — stand apart from the upper station, it takes about twenty minutes to walk to them.

The cable car stops in strong winds, and this happens regularly. The second way is the automobile serpentines from Yalta through the Uchan-Su waterfall, the highest in Crimea: ninety-eight meters. It is full-flowing in spring and after rains, by August it almost dries up.

Sevastopol: A Day of Different Character

From Yalta to Sevastopol is about eighty kilometers and an hour and a half on a mountain road. The city is completely different: not a resort, but a port with military history. In a day it is realistic to manage Chersonesus Taurica — an ancient polis where streets, basilicas and a theater have been preserved, — and Balaklava Bay, so narrow and winding that its entrance is not visible from the sea.

How to Plan a Day Without Checking the Map Every Half Hour

On the page of each place a day around it is suggested: what is nearby, in what order and how much to walk or drive. Open Vorontsov Palace — and it will become visible what fits into the same day, and what does not.

Distances and time are calculated by real roads, not as the crow flies. For Crimea this is fundamental: as the crow flies from Yalta to Simferopol is fifty kilometers, by road — eighty through the pass.

About the Road and Season

There are few parking lots on the south coast, and almost all are paid. At the palaces places run out by ten in the morning in high season. The serpentine requires habit: descents are long, and brakes overheat on them — it is better to reduce speed by gear.

The best time is May, June and September. In July and August it is hot, roads are clogged, and there is a queue for a photo at viewpoints. In October it is warm, the sea still holds twenty degrees, and there are half as many people.