The Fountain of Bakhchisarai

📖 The Scoop

The town of Bakhchisarai; where stands the palace once tenanted by the khans of the Crimea, who so long proved themselves most dangerous neighbors to Russia, afterwards allowed to fall into decay, but eventually restored by Potemkin for the reception of the Empress Catherine II. in 1787. One of its richly ornamented halls contains a fountain which has been rendered to Russian readers well known by Pushkin's celebrated poem, "The Fountain of Bakhchisarai," which relates the fortunes of the beautiful Georgian wife of one of the last of the khans. But this excursion is not likely to be often made. Almost every traveler will proceed along the post-road from Alupka to Yalta, a distance of about twelve miles, passing through a scene which must deeply interest everyone who in the least resembles the Yorkshire servant who, as the author of "Eöthen" relates, rode doggedly on through Turkey, looking out for "gentlemen's seats." For along this beautiful coast, on the smiling land which the towering cliffs screen from the cutting north wind, and which looks down upon the wide expanse of a sea that here generally seems to merit its name of Euxine, or "kindly to strangers," some of the greatest personages in the Russian Empire have built lordly mansions. Here the Emperor Alexander I. constructed the retreat which he called Orianda, and hither he longed, towards the gloomy close of his well-meaning reign, to retire, in hopes of spending peaceful days in the society of a few intimate friends.

Genre: Poetry / Russian & Soviet (fancy, right?)