The main attraction of Alupka is the palace of Count M.S. Vorontsov, Governor-General of the Novorossiysk Territory. It was built in 1828-1848 at the foot of Mount Ai-Petri and is now a museum.
Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov (1782-1856), son of the famous Anglomaniac and Russian envoy to London Semyon Vorontsov was the most famous Russian grandee. He was well educated, handsome and brave. He went through the Turkish wars, the War of 1812 and foreign campaigns, participated in the capture of Paris, and then commanded the occupation troops in France. His portrait by D. Dow hangs in the famous military gallery of the Hermitage.
Since 1823 he was appointed Governor-General of Novorossiya - and since then his life has been forever linked with the south of the Russian Empire. M. S. Vorontsov still fought: in 1828 took Varna, in the 40's was the Caucasian commander-in-chief, but his main business was the development of Novorossiya. His main residence was Odessa (now the city is decorated with a monument to Vorontsov), here he was buried. In Odessa and Kishinev he met Pushkin, who was in exile in these places. It is said that Pushkin had an affair with the young wife of Vorontsov and the latter was jealous. Most likely, there was no affair, but the poet was distinguished by a rather licentious behaviour in society and could compromise her. Therefore, his relations with Vorontsov were extremely strained. History has left several of Pushkin's barbed epigrams devoted to it.
Construction of the palace
Vorontsov came to Crimea for holidays. He decided to arrange a summer residence in Alupka: it was fantastically beautiful, but almost deserted places, apart from a very small village.
Vorontsov from childhood loved everything English. He entrusted the construction of the palace to the Englishman Thomas Harrison. This was an honoured elderly architect, an old acquaintance of his father: he had designed structures at Lancaster Castle, many bridges in England and even prison castles. But Harrison only had time to create a draft project and died. Then Vorontsov entrusted the construction to another Englishman, younger - Edward Blore. That one co-operated a lot with the British royal house. It was he who completed and decorated the famous Buckingham Palace. And now Blore conceived a grandiose palace that would mix all the styles from English Gothic to Moorish, and so that the whole looks amazingly harmonious. He incorporated parts of the previous master's design into his own, such as the niche of the main portal.
The construction itself was led by a third Englishman - William Gunt. Work on the palace and park lasted from 1828 to 1848. They built the palace with conscientiousness, from the most durable Crimean stone - diabase (the correct modern name of this rock is dolerite). There are five buildings and more than a hundred luxuriously decorated rooms. They started building with the dining room building, and the central one was urgently finished by 1837, when Nicholas I and his heir came to Crimea. By this time the house was already so ready that it could receive the emperor.
The last to appear was the lion terrace, decorated with six sculptures of lions - each with its own character. The lower lions sleep, the middle lions play, and the topmost lions guard the entrance and watch the sea closely.
Of course, such a huge farm required first a huge number of workers and then servants. All of them also lived here, so the complex was a whole city. Built the palace Vorontsov serfs, but they were paid for it and very well for those times: from ten to twenty rubles a month (other nobles from their estates received smaller amounts). A part of it went to pay the tax (after all, serfs), but there was also a lot left on their hands.
Upper and Lower Parks
Apart from the palace itself, the huge park created by the genius gardener Karl Antonovich Kebakh is of separate interest. Kebach was a hereditary gardener from a German family: the Kebachs in Germany had been involved in gardens since the 17th century. He devoted half of his life to this park: from 1824 to 1851 he was practically engaged only in it. Listed and communicated botanical gardens, was close friends with the second director of the Nikitsky Botanical Garden N. Gartvis. Here Kebah also got married. For his family was built a separate house in the Gothic style. Towards the end of his life, he was considered the main expert of the southern Crimea - without his advice did not break gardens in any manor houses.
Vorontsov Park occupies almost forty hectares and amphitheatre rises from the sea. The upper landscape park is arranged in a romantic style and carefully copies the wild nature, however, every detail of it is carefully thought out. Here again the owner's passion for all things English is evident - it was the English who invented this type of park.
In the Upper Park the following sights are worth seeing:
- Big and Small Chaos. These are two large groups of volcanic blocks of dolerite lying in disorder - the European version of a "rock garden". In fact, their location is calculated, and inside there are laid paths and streams, specially planted ornamental species of shrubs - for example, strawberry bushes, which looks beautiful against the background of grey-green stones.
- Moonstone is a twenty metre high rock on the outskirts of Little Chaos. One of its faces is so flat that it can reflect moonlight.
- Swan, Moonstone, and Mirror Ponds. They are also surrounded by stone blocks and are stylised to look like mountain lakes. Several bags of semi-precious stones were once poured into the bottom of Swan Lake to shimmer beautifully in the sun. Swans have been living here since Vorontsov times. Roses were once planted along the shores. The Moon Lake was specially made to admire it in the moonlight: the bottom is covered with silvery sand. Mirror Lake is the smallest and most secluded. The trees around it are specially planted at an incline to reflect beautifully in the water.
- Glades of the park. Sycamore glade, where besides plane trees grows exotic Araucaria chilean, which counts more than 130 from the genus. Peacocks fly into the branches of the plane trees. Sunny glade - here you can see the view of Ai-Petri and there is a cypress tree, which is more than 200 years old. Contrast glade - here specially selected trees and shrubs, sharply differing from each other in the colour of leaves and trunks.
The lower, parade park is more regulated, it terraces down to the sea and it offers magnificent views of the sea, the front facade of the palace and the staircase with lions. A hundred-metre-long rose-lined palm avenue descends to the sea.
The fountains are worth seeing here. The fountain of tears, created under the impression of Pushkin's poem "Bakhchisarai Fountain", the fountain of cupids, the fountain "shell", the source "cat's eye". The park is decorated with Cumans' "stone women" - statues, which in the 10-11th centuries were placed on their mounds by the Cumans.
Soviet period
The Vorontsovs owned this place before the revolution. The last was Mikhail Semyonovich's granddaughter, Elizaveta Dashkova, a close confidant of the last empress. She did a lot of charity work: for example, during the First World War, hospitals were opened in all her mansions, both here and in St Petersburg. But the revolution forced her to go into exile, and the palace went to the Soviet authorities.
The palace was lucky - it was not looted and ruined, and became a museum, which brought nationalised valuables from all over the peninsula. The building was almost a hundred years old, but it was so solid that it was not damaged in the earthquake of 1927. Even during the occupation, the museum managed to preserve the buildings and most of its collections (although the director of the museum after the war went to jail for aiding the occupiers).
During the Yalta Conference, a British delegation was lodged here: Winston Churchill lived in the former quarters of Vorontsov himself. For some time after the war the palace was used as a summer house, then as a sanatorium, but in 1956 the museum was reopened here.
Palace Museum
This is the richest Crimean museum, it has more than 11 thousand exhibits. In the post-war years it was often used for film shoots. "Mio, my Mio", "Heavenly Swallows", "Ordinary Miracle", "Amphibian Man" - this is not the entire list of films that were shot in this place. Now the museum has five permanent exhibitions and several changing exhibitions.
First of all, of course, people come here to look at the front halls of the Main Building, decorated in the English style. Here the interior decoration has been almost completely preserved. In the one-storey guest wing there is a section dedicated to Vorontsov's daughter S. M. Shuvalova. Here you can see collections of paintings and engravings, which collected this family, and interiors of the late 40s of the XIX century.
The household building is devoted to the work of the kitchen: a huge cast-iron cooker, crockery, cookery books, pantries - everything that had to do with providing the owners with tasty and healthy food. A separate exposition tells about the life of Vorontsov's butlers and the problems of managing this huge household.
Interesting facts:
- Moscow Red Square is paved with the same Crimean stone from which the palace was built.
- There is a legend among the museum staff that during the occupation Hitler secretly came here.
- In Alupka often tell the following anecdote: Winston Churchill, walking with Stalin in the park, suggested that he sell England one of the sculptures of lions. Stalin said that he would not sell it, but if Churchill answered his riddle, he would give it to him. The riddle was: "Which finger on the hand is the most important?" "Index finger," - replied Churchill, and was wrong - Stalin showed him in response to the kukish.
On a side note
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Location: Alupka, Dvortsovoye sh.., 18
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Official website: https://worontsovpalace.org
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Opening hours: from 9:00 to 18:00, on Saturdays from 9:00 to 20:00, without days off.
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Cost of tickets to the Main building: adult - 350 rubles, discount - 200 rubles. The cost of tickets to all expositions: adult 830 rubles, discount - 450 rubles.
