Soldaia

Soldaia lies in a bay on Crimea's southern coast, below a ridge of ancient coral reef that the Tatars later called Cenevez Kaya, the Genoese Rock. The old Byzantine port of Sugdaia had long been a stop on the road between Constantinople and the steppe, and the Mongols plundered it in the thirteenth century, but it was quickly rebuilt. In 1365 the Genoese seized the town and made it the seat of the Consulate of Soldaia, governed by an Italian consul elected every year.

The Genoese raised a hasty inner citadel on the crest at once, then an outer wall whose towers each took the name of the consul who built it, many marked with plaques bearing coats of arms; the tower of Federico Astagüerra guarded the harbour. Armenians lived here too, and in 1702 they built the church of St Paraskeva on a hill by the shore. In 1475 the Ottomans took Soldaia together with the other Genoese colonies and Theodoro. It became the seat of a kadi but lost its military value and declined. Russia annexed it in 1783; in 1804 the first Crimean viticultural school opened on the Achiklar estate, in a place where only 33 people were counted the next year.