coast at Alupka. Alupka was first founded as a
Greek settlement. The name originates from the
Greek word for fox (
Alopex) . After the Greeks, Alupka came under control of the
Byzantine Empire. The first written mention of Alupka dates to 960 in a document about the
Byzantine Emperor Romanos II. Later on, Alupka was controlled by the
Crimean Tatars. After 1783 the city came into possession of
Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin,
governor-general of the
Novorossiya Krai. In 1798, the city had a population of 211, consisting mainly of farmers. At the end of 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, Alupka was a famous resort. In the middle of 19th century it was more popular than Yalta, mostly because of the work of the Governor of Novorossia at the time, Mikhail Vorontsov, who built a Palace there (some call it a Castle). Alupka is described by a French traveler in 1811 in his letters to a friend (starting at page127) "Voyage de Moscou à Vienne, par Kiow, Odessa, Constantinople, Bucharest et Hermanstadt; ou, Lettres adressées à Jules Griffith Auguste de Lagarde" Jan 1824 · Treuttel et Würtz: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=p1THCvg9rVEC&rdid=book-p1THCvg9rVEC&rdot=1 It was
occupied by forces of
Nazi Germany during
Operation Barbarossa on November 8th 1941, administered in
Reichskommissariat Ukraine as
Generalbezirk Krym-Taurien, and recaptured by forces of the
Soviet Union on April 16th 1944. A protest happened in Alupka on August 3rd, 2008. During the
Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, it was captured by
unmarked Russian forces on February 24th, although fully solidified control on February 27th after the capture of the Crimean parliament in
Simferopol. Later, after a referendum in March 16th, Crimea as well as Alupka became an official part of Russia, continued to be unrecognized as Russian by many countries. ==Attractions==