Mangup-Kale, the most outstanding of all the Crimean "cave towns", greatly impressed travelers through many centuries. It is located on the mountain plateau of the same name about 600 m above sea level. From three sides, it is limited by vertical precipices 40-70 m high, though its northern slope is cut through by three deep ravines: Tyshkli-Burun (Tatar for "promontory of holes"), Elli-Burun ("promontory of winds"), and Chufut-Cheorgan-Burun ("promontory of the Jews' challenge").

In the 6th century, the Byzantine emperors ordered this stronghold to be built, and many scholars interpret is as a mysterious fortress of Doros, which was mentioned in the 7th - 9th century Byzantine sources as the main fortress of the Crimean Gothia.

In spite of the inaccessibility of Mangup, many scholars and travelers ascended the plateau and left their rapturous memories about it. One can remember the names of the Polish ambassador and diplomatist Martinus Broniovius (Martin Broniewski, 1578), Ottoman traveler Evliya Celebi (mid-17th century), English traveler Maria Guthrie (1795), her compatriot Edward Daniel Clarke (late 18th century), who was accompanied by the famous German and Russian scholar and naturalist Peter Simon Pallas… This list can easily be continued to these days. Nazi general Mannstein was, however, probably the most specific observer of Mangup landscapes: he was a commander of German army in the World War II and established his observation post in Mangup during the assault of Sevastopol. As he remembered later, "an unforgettable spectacle opens in front of us. It was the only of its kind case of modern war, when the commander of the army saw the whole battlefield in front of him". The Byzantine generals, however, appreciated this advantage of Mangup centuries before Mannstein: from this plateau, they observed the movements of barbarian tribes.

In the 6th and 7th centuries, Doros (Mangup) housed a garrison of the so-called phoideratoi, or allies of Byzantium, the Goths and Alans by origin. From the late 8th to the late 9th century, Mangup-Kale was under the power of the Khazars. A period of decline in the late 10th - 13th centuries gave way to a revival and prosperity in the 14th and 15th centuries. Mangup became the capital of Theodoro principality, which included the south-west highlands and the south coast of the Crimea from Laspi to Alushta. This was the time when the city obtained a new name, similar to that of the principality, Theodoro.

Under the rule of the prince Alexios, who reigned in 1420s and 1430s, big basilica was renovated and the palace was erected in the middle of the site, and the citadel was reconstructed. Three lines of fortifications, which defended the town, had finally developed by that time. The first, or exterior line, provided the defense of most vulnerable places along the perimeter of the plateau. The second was an intermittent line of walls with towers, which traversed the plateau crosswise, from the south-west steep to the west slope of Gamam-Dere ravine. The third line was citadel at the Promontory of Winds.

Mangup-Theodoro was taken by the Turkish army in 1475 and then became an outpost of the Ottoman power in the Crimea until the 18th century. After the Ottomans were defeated in the war with the Russian empire (1768-1784), they left the peninsula and the Tatars took the fortress for a short time. Mangup-Kale was finally depopulated in the late 18th century. Mangup-Kale was finally depopulated in the late 18th century.

Mangup was built on the top of a 584 meter high limestone plateau about 30 kilometres by road east and a little north of Sevastopol. One can get there by car along the spectacular mountain roads, or by small local buses, bringing you to the very bottom of the mountain where Tatar village of Haji-Sala is located.

There you can enjoy some traditional meals, like pilov (fried rise with meat) or manti (Asian dumplings with meat or cheese) and some great green or black tea with herbs, while sitting (or even lying) on the takhta, a raised bed-like platform covered with a Bukhara carpet anp pillows. But do not eat too much - the rise to Citadel of Mangup-Kale is really challenging. (Another option is to rent from Tatars an old Russian jeep with driver, which will take you to the summit.)

The footclimb from Haji-Sala to the summit of Mangup-Kale takes an hour, two thousand feet of struggling and sweating upwards until a broken city-wall looms up among the trees. From here the going is a little easier. But now the forest becomes a cemetery. Hundreds and hundreds of stone tombs drift on a sea of dead leaves, tilting, listing, capsizing, engraved with deep-cut Hebrew characters.

The tombs belong to the Karaim - a Jewish sect which began in Mesopotamia in the eighth century AD and broke with the mainstream of rabbinical Judaism two hundred years later.

Just below the rim of the Mangup summit, there is a spring of chill, delicious water. Then the trees part and you emerge into a tableland of flat, sort turf scented with thyme. Ruins stand about, some with towers and arches, others little more than the stone wall-footings which are all that remains of basilicas and gatehouses and synagogues and watch-towers. The plateau is about one square kilometre in general area. Right up until the end of the 14th century, and the foundation of Kaffa with the construction of a defensive line by the Genoese, Mangup, then known as powerful Principality of Feodoro was the largest fortress in the Crimea, successfuly competing with Genoeses over territories and towns along the Black Sea.

The Mangup fortress was a three-tiered defensive system. The main line of defence provided defence for the entire contour of the plateau. This line was built during the reign of Justinian I ( 540-560 AD). Unfortunately, it is very hard to see the ramparts of this first line because most of them are buried deep underground. The upper section of the walls are fully exposed now, but they were built under the Ottoman Turks in the beginning of the 16th century.

A second line of defence cuts across the two promontories on the plateau where the town developed. It has been established from archaeological research and the methods of construction that this line was built at the end of the 14th or beginning of the 15th century by the Feodorites. The third line was the Citadel of Feodoro itself.

The second line of defence is the focus of current archaeological excavations.The historical layer now under study is from the end of the 14th century, and right underneath are layers with artefacts dating back to the third century and up through the eight century. A historical period is missing in the time frame of the ninth to the fourteenth century, which is thought by some archeologists to have been linked to a cataclysmic earthquake at the turn of the 10th and 11th century. The only thing for sure is that Gothia went back to Mangup and left history for several hundred years.

Below this `Lost World' on its plateau, the world continued to change, but people of Feodoro kept on worshipping in its huge basilica and ignoring the turmoils at the foot of its cliffs until - in 1475 - the Ottoman Turks arrived.

Many legends and stories are spoken about what exactly happened then - here is a couple, where past strangely and wonderfuly mixes with today and even future - legend about last prince of Feodoro and a BBC story about old legends living out in the XXIst century.

After the Turks captured the citadel, they used this fortress for more than three hundred years. The Turkish garrison abandoned the fortress in 1774. In 1792 the last inhabitants left Mangup, these were the karaites.

You can get there by direct flight to Simferopol or through Kiev or Odessa.