Many researchers of Yalta’s success as a resort believe that the city owes some of its extravagant fame to its own embankment. It appeared only in the second half of the XIX century. That is, super-palaces with parks such as Livadia, Alupka and Gurzufsky were already built, and on the shore of the bay towered only the house of the customs and rocked on the waves of a wooden pier. This was testified by the poet V. A. Zhukovsky, who visited the city in 1837.
Count Vorontsov, appointed governor of the Novorossiysk region, wished to change the situation. In the same 1837 began to build a road from Yalta to Simferopol. Then followed the construction of the pier. Before it, ships had to «park» at the roadstead, communicating with the shore with the help of running back and forth barges. The logical step after the construction of the wharf was the erection of the quay. The project was ordered by A.L. Berthier-Delagard and N.M. Shevtsov. In 1886 in Yalta appeared a real embankment. It was two-stage to protect the structure from storms.
It was built of stone blocks — red-black granite and light gray porphyrite. And the trademark of Yalta Embankment were metal railings, which caused associations with the board of a ship. Chekhov depicted it exactly like this, mentioning the pride of Yalta in «The Lady with the Dog».
Today it is the epicenter of the city’s social life. It is a Crimean version of the Croisette, the key boulevard for promenades in Cannes. Regardless of their status, almost all guests of Yalta allocate a few hours to walk along it and see the urban legends.
For example, almost in the very center of the Embankment — on the first line, there is «Villa Sofia». People are always curious about which domestic star stayed in the family hotel of Sofia Rotaru. If you do not like modern pop music, and prefer singers of the «silver age» — please come under the five hundred year old sycamore tree. Under this tree American dancer Isadora Duncan made a date with Sergey Esenin.
The Golden Fleece» rises opposite the sycamore tree in the sea. It is a restaurant made in the form of an ancient Greek petecontora. Although the thirty-meter ship is raised on stilts above the water, it still creates a feeling of being in the time «before our era», when Greek colonizers explored the shores of the South Coast.
Behind the Duncan-Esenin plane-tree, the Embankment is crossed by the Uchan-Su, a river that escaped from Ai-Petri yayla to the salty waters of the Black Sea. If you return to the center of Yalta’s Promenade la Croisette, you will see several rows of benches. They are for the public, in front of which amateur rock singers and almost extinguished pop stars perform. Informals of all stripes also gather here. Parallel to this improvised semi-amphitheater is a boat exchange. For a certain fee the owners of «Marin», «Helen» and «Katerina» will take tourists even to Hellas, but excursions along the Big Yalta are still more popular.
For those who do not often come to vacation in Yalta, it will be nice to see the preserved monument to Lenin on the Embankment. After its erection, for some time the main street of the city was named after the leader. Not far away is the historic hotel «Tavrida», a new chapel from the future Cathedral of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, a lot of chic restaurants, palm trees and attractions for children.