Vorontsov Palace in Alupka
Vorontsov Palace is the pearl of Crimea, located in the city of Alupka. The elegant castle is located at the foot of Mount Ai-Petri and organically fits into the natural landscape. The castle rises surrounded by a unique park, laid 200 years ago, and the grand staircase offers an impressive view of the Black Sea. One of the attractions of the park is “Chaos” – a pile of gray-green stone blocks of diabase as high as a four-story house. The first owner of the palace was the most luminous Prince Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov. The construction of the Vorontsov Palace in Alupka lasted from 1828 to 1848. Serfs were engaged in heavy work, and relief finishing was done manually by hereditary stonecutters. At first the Table Building was erected, then the Central Building. In the 1840s a billiard room, wings, towers, guest and household buildings, as well as a library appeared. On the ledges of the South Terrace the sappers worked hard. Thanks to them, the Vorontsov Palace acquired a grand staircase, on the pedestals of which in 1948 lions made by Italian master Giovanni Bonanni were placed. As for the Vorontsov Park, it from 1824 to 1851 was engaged in the main gardener of the South Coast of the Crimea – Karl Antonovich Kebah.
