Vorontsov acquired the land around Alupka piecemeal from 226 Tatar inhabitants between 1823 and 1825. He spent the equivalent of over 37,000 silver rubles in the process. Vorontsov developed the estate between 1828 and 1848 with revenues from the wine produced at Massandra.
The celebrated Alupka palace, designed by Edward Blore, was perched amid a wild landscape of rock and cliff running down to the sea and surrounded by the houses of local Tatars (some of whom he convinced to resettle away from the palace grounds in exchange for his building them a new mosque). In 1837 this served as the setting in which Vorontsov entertained the tsar, his family and extended entourage in grand style, with fireworks displays and lavish dinners.
The palace was by far the most spectacular demonstration of what contemporaries described as “oriental” or “asiatic” flair in Crimea. Alupka was “renowned far and wide,” according to Kohl, “for its architectural and Hesperian splendours,” the designs of which alone were rumored to have cost upwards of 60,000 rubles. But it was even more remarkable for its marriage of Gothic and eastern elements. The western side of the palace resembled a medieval castle wall with fortifications, while the northern façade was done in the Tudor style. The southern and most famous façade meanwhile gained the nickname “Alhambra” because of its two-storey horseshoe arch, slender minarets, and a deeply-recessed niche with an Arabic inscription reading “There is no God but Allah.”
The project, still incomplete in the early 1840s, was expected to run Vorontsov seven million rubles, but Kohl was not impressed. He faulted the local marble with which it was built for its “greenish cast,” the large windows that did not fit the Gothic styling, and the location of the castle itself with only the “gray desolate sea” for a view. Inside, he found some of the rooms splendid, but criticized the books and pictures which decorated them as “by no means remarkable.”