Vignettes

Descriptions of the places and spaces of Crimea culled from the accounts of the women and men who traveled through and settled down on the peninsula.

“[A]fter going about twelve miles among the most beautiful mountains imaginable, a small valley appeared a little to the right of us infinitely pretty. We crossed that and went through a thick wood, which led to the valley of Baydar; a most…

Alupka was graced with plentiful raspberry, pear and fig trees and the cypresses planted by order of Potemkin in the 1780s. There were groves of laurel, and “everywhere wonderful rose bushes, lavender, jasmine and lilies,” gushed Bronevskii, “such…