Every city has its unique symbol, having seen which people who have been there remember pleasant moments of rest, rejoice and light up with the desire to go there again. In Shchelkino such a landmark was gazebo-rotunda on the cape Turtle.
When the city, erected as a settlement for workers building the Crimean nuclear power plant, dramatically changed the course of its life, «retrained» in the resort, it is this small structure somehow, but easily and unobtrusively, acquired the status of its main symbol. A modest, small-sized brick gazebo forever won the hearts of locals and tourists, for whom a photo against its background became a mandatory point of rest in Schelkino.
Legend has it that the gazebo on Cape Turtle was built specially for filming some episodes of the movie «King Lear», another legend says that this gazebo was one of the favorite resting places of the famous cosmonaut V. Tereshkova, and it is often called so — Valentina Tereshkova’s gazebo. However, these stories are not officially confirmed. It is only known that the initiator of its construction was the then director of the nearby recreation center «Riga» E.J. Vilka — a woman who loved her city madly and eventually gave it its main symbol. The low brick pergola was built in 1972 in the form of a rotunda — a round building with a dome resting on columns around its perimeter. It harmoniously complemented the panorama of Shchelkino, making it even more romantic. Walking to the gazebo became a good tradition for tourists and residents of the town, but in 2009, for reasons still unknown, it was destroyed.
Nevertheless, the rotunda on Cape Turtle can be seen today, but more monumental. Already in the late summer of 2010 in the same place where the former symbol of the city rose, was erected a new one. The size and shape of the new structure exactly repeated the outlines of the old one, but this time the builders decided to eliminate the risk of destruction, building the gazebo in the form of a monolithic structure made of reinforced concrete. As before, from the gazebo, located near the pension «Riga» opens a beautiful panorama of the city, the seascape, the Russian bay of the Arabat Gulf of the Azov Sea and the cape-reserve «Kazantip». As before, in the sunset hours the First cape, if you look at it from the city beach, turns into a piece of some fairy-tale world thanks to the romantic structure, through the columns of which the rays of the sun leaving the sky break through. However, something else, besides the appearance of the gazebo, has also changed — now it is not the only one in Shchelkino. Closer to the boarding house «Riga» was built another gazebo, which is already exactly — both in size and shape, and the materials of manufacture, repeated the original. And now the coastal panorama of the city is decorated with two very simple, but due to the harmonious combination with the coastal landscape, extremely effective constructions. Today they are not just symbols of Shchelkino, they are the sights of Crimea, given to it by its residents who love, appreciate and want to make their city even better and more interesting.
Meeting sunrise or sunset, contemplating the legendary glow of the Azov Sea and just a walk to the gazebo on Cape Turtle or near the pension «Riga» will leave much more pleasant impressions than you can imagine. For tourists, these are some of the main sights of Shchelkino, along with the Crimean Nuclear Power Plant and other interesting places of this amazing city.