Guest House attached to the church of Saint Alexander Nevsky in Alupka (Greater Yalta)

Pretty advantageous location approaching the sea side, the holiday makers are offered an apt opportunity to visit not only the Orthodox sacred places of the Crimea but to go sightseeing locally. The Guest House attached to the church shows the best advantage while comparing with the majority of health resorts on the Southern coast.

The premise itself was built in 1913 like a climatic colony for the tutors of the parish school bearing the name of Emperor Alexander III.

In 1916 the parish (colony) was visited by Emperor Nicholas II with the family. He was staying for a short period & was present during Divine Liturgy in the Church of St. Alexander Nevsky; it is located in the same premise.

Three storey building is distinguished by its original design. It was transferred to the ownership of an Orthodox Church in 1996. The Church has been restored and retained its historical shape & has become a genuine place of comfort for the Orthodox parishioners.

The Guest House attached to the church is not only a marine & climatic clinic. Sojourn here yields a lot of spiritual benefit. All the favorable conditions are available here for a heart’s ease & delightsome leisure.

Comfortable rooms with huge balcony-loggia offer a unique opportunity to view the Black Sea & a fairy park. Home like armchairs make you feel perfectly at home & help you to while away the time in an atmosphere of spiritual harmony enjoying the fabulous Nature.

The shower rooms & the bathrooms are at your disposal nearby.

Wide & light lit refectory consists of a triple hall sparkling with an immaculate lustration. It can easily house 150 messmates at a time. Here one can order various meals according to one’s taste, diet included.

Unsurpassed chef & fabulous culinary magicians will make your mouth water.

The sea is only a few meters away. Wonderful beaches are under the ownership of the parish. For ardent sportsmen there is always a chance to indulge in a table tennis or volleyball, mini football as there is a special court.

Well groomed park invites for a walk the admirers of a quiet landscape. The park was laid out almost a hundred years ago as a natural landscape style.

It treasures more than 30 varieties of plants: curly oak tree, a maple, Cornelian cherry tree, chestnut tree, a yew and a whole variety of exotic plants: Italian pine, cedar of Lebanon, deodar, noble laurel, evergreen guelder rose, Mediterranean Greek olive, giant sequoia, pyramid like & horizontal cypresses, wistaria Chinese and what not.

The park is a climatic clinic sheltered under the heavens. The lay out of the park is rather convenient: its wide lanes are a wonderful terrain cure for healthy walks, mountainous — marine air is filled with the fragrance of Southern plants & it renders pretty favorable effect over respiratory organs.

While staying at the Guest House attached to the parish you’ll be able to exercise fascinating pilgrimage trips & go on foot to Yalta, Nikita Botanical Gardens, Gurzuf and Foros, you’ll visit hero-city Sevastopol, Chersonese, Bahchisarai.

The programs of pilgrimage & excursions include the trip to the unique cathedrals of the Crimea, like the Church of Resurrection in Foros, 100 year old Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky in Yalta, once being the ownership of the tsar family, the Churches in Livadia & Lower Oreanda.

Unique are the architecture & the background of Orthodox cathedrals of Sevastopol: Saint Vladimir’s in Chersonese, restored recently in all its beauty, burial vault of Russian admirals — the heroes of Crimean War (1853–1856), Protection of the Mother of God Cathedral in the very heart of the city-hero in Bolshaya Morskaya Street.

Unforgettable will be for you the pilgrimage to Holy Assumption Bakhchisarai Monastery, St. Anastasia secluded Monastery (village Predushelnoye), Ss. Kosma and Damian Monastery in the outskirts of Alushta and St. Paraskeva the Great Martyr Nunnery, visiting miraculous heeling water springs.

Not far from the House there is the world famous Palace — National park (Vorontsov’s Palace-Museum). Built in the middle of XIX th century as a summer residence of Governor-General of the Novorossiysk territory M. S. Vorontsov, the palace & the park are regarded to be the best palace-park ensemble of Russia XIX th century. Project of the Palace was executed by the best English architect Edward Blore. It is noteworthy that Blore had participated in construction of Buckingham Palace in London and Sir Walter Scott’s castle — Abbotsford in Scotland.

The building itself is a manifestation of a harmoniously blended various styles with the landscape, the forms of a medieval castle, oriental castle and an early English Renaissance. Even the building material, being a local diabase, suits perfectly well the background — greenery of a luxurious park & grey rock of Ai-Petri Mountain.

Wonderful are also the interior dwellings of the yard; on the 1st floor one can find an Art Gallery in the miniature. Among the canvasses exhibited at Alupka Palace are the masterpieces belonging to the brushes of Rokotov, Levitsky, Kramskoy, Aivazovsky, Repin and West European artists of XVI–XVIII th centuries as well as our contemporaries.