The Golden Gate is often called the visiting card of Koktebel. For hundreds of years of their popularity they have acquired a lot of legends and legends, romantic and chilling, mysterious and alluring.
The Golden Gate is a rock at the foot of the famous attractions of Ukraine mountain-volcanic massif Karadag. Directly from the sea at a height of about 15 meters soar up a massive gate with sharp stone protrusions of bizarre shape. The Golden Gate attracts all the guests of the city, everyone who comes to Koktebel is sure to take a boat trip to this amazing place.
For many years this attraction of Koktebel had a completely different name — Shaitan-kapu, which translates from Crimean Tatar as Devil’s Gate. For several centuries they were considered the entrance to the underworld. The arched shape of the rock, towering above the surface of the Black Sea waters, sharp stone peaks cutting the air — the amazing location and shape amazed, frightened, surprised many who saw it. Even A.S. Pushkin, who drew the gate in the margins of the manuscript of Eugene Onegin, was no exception.
Pushkin remembered the Golden Gate so vividly that 3 years after he had seen it he depicted it accurately and practically topographically. However, the writer could not help illustrating his impressions of the mysterious rock: just below the gate, he depicted a demon, around which jump and dance little bezyata, and next to flying on a broomstick witch. Next to the drawing Pushkin wrote:
Who lived and thought, he can not
In the soul not to despise people;
He who has felt, he is troubled
The ghost of irretrievable days …
Legends and legends connected those who saw the rock with the Golden Gate. Thus, the ancient Greeks believed that it was through this gate one could enter the underground kingdom of the dead, which was ruled by Hades, that such ancient heroes as Odysseus, Heracles and Orpheus passed through this gate.
The name Golden Gate was given to the quaint rock not too long ago. Because of the yellow lichen, in the light of sunlight giving the rock a reddish color, they began to be called so, and the dark legends that linked Koktebel, Golden Gate with the place of entrance to the underworld or Hell, have gone into the past. It is believed that if you pass through the arch of the Golden Gate on a boat, the wish made at that moment is sure to come true.
The imagination of nature is boundless, and such sights of Crimea as the Golden Gate — a vivid confirmation of this, which is convinced by all who have seen this amazing rock with their own eyes. For all guests of Koktebel Golden Gate is an opportunity to see a unique natural monument, get the brightest impressions and even touch the legends of ancient Greece.