Bakhchisaray

Thirty kilometers to the south-west from Simferopol there is a wonderful town, covered with many legends and marvelous stories. This is a orchard town, palace town – this is the town of Bakhchisaray. ItisauniquetownofCrimea. Bakhchisaray majesticallypreservesitshistory, preservesitscolour. The town was developing around the palace – Khan Mengly Girey’s residence, who was the great Genghis Khan’s descendant. According to the legend, which says about the foundation of the town, Khan Mengly Girey’s son went hunting. The hunt turned out to be lucky, and the Khan’s son wanted to be alone. He went to the river bank and saw the fighting of two snakes. Soon one of them got weak, and the third one joined the combat. Then the weak snake with difficulty crept to water, revived and disappeared. Khan Mengly Girey’s son was very glad, having seen in it a happy sign… And on the place where the snakes were fighting a palace was built.

Bakhchisaray has seen and endured many things during its history: the Russian and Turkish wars, Crimean War, Civil War, Great Patriotic War. The traces of all these sad historic events the town keeps in itself, sharing them only with the tourists who have visited it.

It is pleasant to walk about the town situated in the gorge in heat, it is also nice in cold time of the year to walk along the twisting streets of the old part of the town and smooth streets of the new part, breathing in the aroma and enjoying the view of the plants typical of Crimea. Being in town one cannot help getting interested in its history, plunging in its colour. The central object attracting people’s views and making plunge into the past in thoughts is Khan-Saray, or Khan’s Palace. It can say a lot about Crimean Khan’s rich life, about concubine girls’ tears, about great battles and great defeats, about the power of spirit and intrigues. Wonderful oriental colour of the palace, undoubtedly, causes European guests’ delight and admiration: a large, light yard, light beautiful galleries, a lot of fountains, Major Khan’s Mosque, rooms. Fanciful many-coloured windows, intricate inscriptions, ornament and carving produce the indelible impression of lightness, holiday and beauty. The motifs of the Khan’s Palace are taken from Turkish architecture and luxury. The voice of the palace is affable and responsible museum officials, due to whom the mysteries are revealed. Now, after tsars, princes, famous poets, writers, painters and travelers everyone can visit the Bakhchisaray Palace – it is available to all people.

Khan’s cemetery in Bakhchisaray, with monuments in the oriental style is the place of the miraculous peace and trepidation. Epitaphshavedeepsenseandtheirauthor. Sary-Gyuzel Bath, Ambassadorial Yard, Aleviz’s Portal, Board and Court Hall, Pool Garden, Harem, Summerhouse, Minor Palace Mosque, the fountains of the Khan’s Palace: Fountain Monument in honour of Three Hundred Year Reign of the Romanov House, «Golden Fountain», incomparable and sad «Fountains of Tears» – all these and many other objects of the museum complex have their legend, they are beautiful and interesting. They reveal many facets and fragments of the history of the wonderful Town of Bakhchisaray and allow to touch the eternity.

Not far from the Palace there is «the Catherine’s Milestone», which for many years has been preserving the memory about the presence in Crimea of the Russian Empress Catherine the Second. The Art Museum, situated in the Khan’s Palace, the House Museum of the painters Yelena Varnavovna Nagaevskaya and Alexander Georgievich Romm, the House Museum of the Crimean Tatar writer Ismail Gasprinskiy, the Mosques of «Ismi Khan» and Orta-Dzhami, the neglected cemetery of the period of the Crimean War, the mausoleums of the Khan’s time, which are in Bakhchisaray, have their history.

The wonderful Town of Bakhchisaray, nobody remains indifferent after getting acquainted with it, and the places of interest, situated in the vicinity of it, – the Cave Town of Chufut-Kale, Assumption Monastery… and many others – attract to themselves with every year more and more, more and more.