Ancient Principality of Theodoro the Great Mangup!!

The cave city of Mangup Kale. In the long chain of cuest foothills of the Crimea majestically rises the table mountain-remainer, which bears the name of Baba-Dag (Father-Horus) or Mangup. Climbing to the very top, the traveler will come face to face with the architectural heritage of an ancient civilization, captured right in the rock firmament of the plateau. Here is one of several, the largest cave cities of the Crimean Peninsula. It is impossible by any methods to trace when the first cave settlements were laid here, and how many millennia ago the culture of stone architects was born here. But there is much archaeological and written evidence of the later civilizations that inhabited these places. For example, starting from the late Middle Ages, and up to the complete destruction of Byzantium by the Ottoman Empire, here - on Mangup, the capital of one of the most glorious and influential Crimean principalities of our era - the principality of Feodoro was erected. Few people know, but it was in this principality that Russia borrowed and adopted the tradition of Orthodoxy, and even the coat of arms of Russia - the double-headed eagle - is the coat of arms of the principality of Feodoro.