We live in the city of Yalta. It is a well – known fact that Yalta is the capital of the southern coast and the most famous city of Crimea. This is a seaside resort, where in the summer on vacation comes a huge number of people. That is why Yalta has become one of the biggest centers of cultural life, where well-known theater and film festivals, pop and music competitions are held.
At school, we were told about the history of the native city. The first written mention of Yalta refers to the XII century ad, although the traces of human settlements found here date back to the Bronze age. Yalta was founded by the Greeks, probably in the I century. The legend shows that huddled in the storm of the way Greek sailors, long tossed about in search of shore, and when, in the end, I saw the shore ("Yalos"), I decided to call based on the landing of the settlement. In the middle ages the town was in the possession of the Roman Empire, the Principality of Theodoro and was known under the names Aleta and Dzhalita. Unlike Alushta and Gurzuf, Yalta has never been a fortress or an important military stronghold. From 1475 to 1774, when the southern coast of Crimea was part of the Ottoman state, Yalta was part of it.
After the eviction of the Christian population from the Crimea to the Azov sea, carried out in 1778 by order of the Russian government and the mass emigration of the Crimean Tatars, Yalta virtually deserted and until the end of the century was a small fishing village. In 1837 the gravel road connected Yalta with Alushta, and in 1848 the road to Sevastopol was built. The city of Yalta became, in 1838, and from the 1860s, when a well-known physician, Professor S. P. Botkin found the climate of South shore healing and recommended that Tsar Alexander II purchased the manor, began its rapid development as a resort. Yalta – a large modern city, whose population today-more than 80 thousand inhabitants. There are a lot of outstanding monuments. Livadia, Vorontsov, Massandra palaces and many other palaces of our city are very famous. As well as the Nikita Botanical garden, founded in 1812, which gathered in its collection more than 28 thousand exotic plants from around the world.
Yalta itself is interesting for its unique combination of architectural monuments inscribed in the mountain landscape. There are many beautiful (though not always in good condition) buildings of the late XIX – early XX centuries. The most interesting places in Yalta are as follows: city embankment, restored in 2003-2004, the Armenian Church, built by architect Ter-Mikaelyan, painted inside the great Armenian artist Vardges with Suranjana, the Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculate conception of the virgin Mary, Yalta cable car that leads to the hill Darsan, which offers a panoramic view of the city, the Church of St. John Chrysostom with the Golden-domed bell tower was built in the Gothic castle style Palace of the Emir of Bukhara, zoo "fairy Tale" and the house-Museum of Lesya Ukrainka in the Moorish style