The amazing city of Kerch has preserved numerous monuments of the past — historical and architectural sights from antiquity to the decline of the Russian Empire. One of the most popular buildings of the city, a recognized masterpiece of fortification art is the Kerch Fortress, built almost two centuries ago and played a key role in the history of the Russian Empire.
It is here that all tourists who came to rest in Kerch first seek to get. Interested people not only from all over the country, but also from abroad know about this fortress: some of the first tourists who visited the fortress after its joining to the Kerch State Historical and Cultural Reserve in 2003 were guests from Switzerland and Germany.
Kerch Fortress was built in 1857-1877 by order of Alexander II, who wanted to strengthen the borders of the Russian Empire on the Black Sea, which became vulnerable after the defeat in the Crimean War. The main author of the project of the fortress was an outstanding Russian engineer, founder of the Russian fortification school, hero of the Sevastopol defense, Adjutant General E.I. Totleben.
The fortification was erected 4 km south of the city on the capes Ak-Burun and Pavlovsky, as well as the surrounding area. The total area of the fortress amounted to 400 hectares, the garrison provided the possibility of accommodating five thousand people, and the number of structures and buildings exceeded three hundred. In 20 years, according to Totleben’s project, the most powerful fortification was erected on the border of the empire, later called by many scientists a true masterpiece of fortification, a model of military engineering art, which absorbed all the best achievements of thought in this field of the XVIII-XIX centuries. Assessing the genius, power and reliability of the erected fortification, Alexander II ordered to name it «Fort Totleben». In turbulent times, when many military achievements of the country of the past years on the approaches to the sea could be lost, for Russia it became the only support of the state in the Black Sea. Together with Kronstadt, the Emperor regarded the Kerch fortress as one of the two most important outposts of the state at the access to the seas.
The fortifications, virtually unremarkable from the sea, completely controlled the entrance to the Sea of Azov. The fortress was designed so that no enemy ship could pass under the fire of its almost 600 cannons, any ship that would try to pass into the Sea of Azov would invariably come under fire. But in the XIX century the fortress Kerch never played its role, it happened during the Second World War, when it was one of the most important points of coastal defense of the Black Sea coast. Despite the fact that repeated attempts were made to undermine the fortification, it was not done. Thanks to this, anyone today can plunge into its wonderful world, remembering the troubled and unstable past, the past centuries.
Here you can visit the dark dungeons and casemates steeped in terrible legends, go through the enfilade of caponiers and galleries, see the powder cellars, enclosing the territory of the fortifications large fortress moat 3 km long, barracks, underground tunnels, counter-mine galleries and other interesting objects of historical and architectural heritage. An excursion to this attraction of Crimea becomes an unforgettable, impressive and exciting experience — many buildings are perfectly preserved and as if take you back in time 150 years ago, when these walls were preparing for the most terrible thing that can wait for a man — war.