Description of the attraction
The ancient medieval fortress Kalamita is located in the city of Inkerman. Its ruins are located on Monastyrskaya Mountain - at the mouth of the Chernaya River, and the surviving parts of the Christian cave monastery have been preserved in the lower part of the mountain. All these ancient structures are part of the complex of the branch of the national reserve "Chersonesos Tauric".
According to historians, the original fortification was erected on the Monastic Rock in the early Middle Ages. At that time, Byzantium was building fortresses around Kherson, fearing the threat of nomadic raids on the southwestern part of the Crimea. Written sources have not preserved information about this fortification.
The name "Calamita" was first discovered on a Genoese nautical chart published in 1474. Earlier, on the maps of Italian cartographers of the 13th and early 14th centuries, this place was called Gazaria and Kalamira.
Prince Theodoro Alexei erected a fortress in 1427 to protect the only port of the Theodorites called Avlita, located at the mouth of the Black River. The princes Theodoro carried out such a lively trade through the Kalamite port that they became a dangerous competitor for Kafa. In the Genoese instruction of that time, dedicated to the management of the Black Sea colonies, it is written that the Mangup princes, disregarding the rights and privileges of Kafa, openly built a harbor in Kalamita. And the loading and unloading of merchant ships in it damages the taxes collected by Kafa.
The Tatars actively used the Kalamitsky port to sell slaves to the Turks. The Turkish army, having landed in the summer of 1475 in the southeastern Crimea and seized the Genoese colonies, approached Mangup. The capital of the principality fell in December 1475, unable to withstand a long siege. Kalamita was captured by the Turks a little earlier. The fortification on the Monastery rock was called by the Turks In-Kermen (Inkerman). Translated from Turkish, it means "cave fortress". At the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries, they rebuilt the fortress for military operations in the new conditions of the use of firearms.
As early as the 17th century, commercial life was in full swing in the port, but by the middle of the 18th century, the military and commercial significance of the fortress and the port of Kalamita had been lost.
