Taman: The Ancient Shore

Description

A one-day route across the Taman Peninsula from east to west: from an active mud volcano near Varenikovskaya to the ancient towns and literary Taman. About a hundred kilometres by road; all points are museumified or protected, so the route also suits an unhurried trip. It begins with the Shugo mud volcano, a nature monument five kilometres south of the stanitsa of Varenikovskaya and one of the largest active mud volcanoes of the region. It belongs to the Kerch-Taman mud-volcanic province: a cone with a crater field, gryphons emitting methane, and the activity of the sources changing over time. This is geology, not a “mud spa”: keep to the fences, do not smoke near gas seeps and do not leave the roads over wet mud. The road then runs west to the settlement of Sennoy: here lies ancient Phanagoria, one of the largest Greek colonies of the Taman Peninsula and the second, Asiatic, capital of the Bosporan Kingdom alongside Panticapaeum. The city was founded in the sixth century BC; excavations, including underwater ones on the flooded part, continue, and the finds are shown by the Phanagoria museum-reserve. Check opening hours in advance — and do not confuse the museum with the winery of the same name in the same village. The finale is the stanitsa of Taman. On its northern edge, by the shore of the bay, stands the Hermonassa-Tmutarakan hillfort: some twenty-five centuries of unbroken life on one promontory, cultural deposits up to twelve–fourteen metres deep — an ancient polis, the Khazar and Old Russian Tmutarakan, the Ottoman and Russian Taman. Tickets are sold at the archaeological museum on Karl Marx Street. And in the centre of the stanitsa is the Lermontov house museum, opened in 1976, tracing the tale “Taman” from “A Hero of Our Time” and the Caucasian exiles of 1837 and 1840. Together these points assemble the “non-beach” Taman: antiquity, volcanoes and literature.