2-913-984 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Vale leading to Inkerman, 1854. Crimean War, ruins at Kalamita. 'Here is truly a city of caverns, for the white rocks that look over the bay of Aktiar (which, translated, signifies White Rocks), are excavations of a most extraordinary character. These consist of chambers with Gothic windows, cut out of the solid stone. Near the harbour the rocks are hewn into chapels, monasteries, and sepulchres. These are considered by some authorities to have been the retreats of Christians in the early ages. There are several Grecian antiquities in the neighbourhood of the ruined town...but the Russians, with a strange disregard of antiquity and of the beauty of ancient architecture, have made havoc of these splendid remains. Many of the excavations have been converted...into powder magazines; the stone coffins...into troughs for beasts, and the altars into places for manure'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.