Nikolaev
Washed on three sides by the Ingul’s and the Southern Bug’s waters, it looks, from a bird’s eye view, like an open hand turned to the sun. It s situated on the picturesque peninsula at the junction of the Ingul and the Southern Bug rivers in about 600 km to the south-east of Kiev, 150 km from Odessa and 80 km from the Black Sea. This is an ancient, rich land in the south of Ukraine. Here the hot steppe meets the blue waves of the Black Sea, the astringent smells of steppe native-grasses are mixed with sea wind smelling of salt. The steppes of the Pontic coast remember Scythians, ancient Greeks, Slavonic tribes, hordes of nomads, free Zaporozhian Cossacks… Here summer showers still wash out fragÂments of Greek amphoras, coins grown black, ceramic pipes of Cossacks and Turks and other ancient artifact which help us to recreate the history of Nikolaev step by step. The history of the Nikolaev peninsula intensive settlement started in the XVIII century, when the shipyard... [Read More...]
