Anapa

Did You Know?

• Anapa serves as the administrative center of Anapsky District but is not part of it.
• The town is served by Anapa Airport and seldom attracts tourists from outside Russia due to modest infrastructure and inconvenient accessibility from Europe.
• Anapa has a humid subtropical climate with Mediterranean influences at lower elevations, receiving less rainfall than Novorossiysk or Sochi but having somewhat colder winters.

History

The area was settled in antiquity, originally serving as a major seaport called Sinda and later as the capital of Sindica. In the 6th century BCE, Pontic Greeks built the colony of Gorgippia on the site, naming it after a king of the Cimmerian Bosporus. Gorgippia flourished in the 2nd and 3rd centuries BCE as part of the Bosporan Kingdom, with a powerful guild of shipowners controlling eastern Black Sea maritime trade. A statue of Neokles, son of Herodoros, was unearthed by Russian archaeologists and is now in the Russian Museum. An inscription from around 60 AD mentions individuals described as Jews by race. The city was inhabited until the 3rd century CE, when it was overrun by native tribes of Circassian or Adyghe origin, specifically the Natkhuay tribe, who gave Anapa its modern name. The Black Sea littoral later saw successive waves of Asiatic nomads, including Sarmatians, Ostrogoths, Huns, Avars, Gokturks, Khazars, Tatars, and Circassians. At the turn of the 14th century, the Genoese renamed the settlement Mapa, and their domination lasted until an Ottoman fleet arrived in 1475. In 1781, during the reign of Abdul Hamid I, French engineers built a fortress at Anapa for the Ottomans. The fortress was repeatedly attacked by the Russian Empire and was all but destroyed during its last siege in 1829. The town passed to Russia after the Treaty of Adrianople (1829) and was included in Black Sea Okrug of Kuban Oblast, receiving town status in 1846. It was occupied by Ottomans between 1853 and 1856 during the Crimean War, and became part of Black Sea Governorate in 1896. Elizabeth Pilenko, later named a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, served as mayor during the Russian Revolution. It became part of Kuban-Black Sea Oblast in 1920, then North Caucasus Krai in 1924. According to the 1926 census, the population was 49.6% Russian, 32.7% Ukrainian, 5.7% Greek, and 3.9% Armenian. During World War II, it was occupied and totally demolished by Nazi Germany with Romanian help from August 30, 1942 to September 22, 1943.

Culture

The Town Theater of Anapa is located on Krymskaya Street and opened after reconstruction of the Town Cultural Center. There are twenty-nine public libraries, including four for children; in 2010 they received over 8,000 books, magazines and newspapers costing more than 1,000,000 rubles, and nine hundred CDs were purchased.