Dulbert Palace
Dulber Palace is a palace and park ensemble in Koreiz, built in the late XIX century for Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich Romanov. It is one of the attractions of the southern coast of Crimea and Big Yalta. The palace was built from 1895 to 1897 in the Crimean estate of Grand Duke Peter Nikolaevich, uncle of Emperor Nicholas II.
It was designed in Moorish style from sketches made by the Grand Duke himself during his travels to the Middle East and Maghreb. The architect and head of construction was the Yalta city architect Nikolai Krasnov, later also the author of the Livadia and Yusupov palaces. Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich himself compared the Dulbert Palace with the Bluebeard castle. Above the entrance to the palace there was a saying from the Quran with the wish of its owner. The building was decorated with silver domes and jagged walls.
Sailors search Dulbert Palace, 1918
After the February Revolution, the Provisional Government allowed some of the Romanov dynasty to go to Crimea to their estates. After the establishment of Soviet power in Crimea, all of them began to face the immediate danger of physical violence. For the life of the Romanovs in the Crimea was the commissar of the Sevastopol Council, sailor F. L. Zadorozhny, who was to report and carry out orders only of the central Soviet authorities. By the end of the winter of 1917-1918, in connection with the beginning of the German offensive in Ukraine, the local Yalta Council, which had a strong position of anarchists, trying to deal with the Romanovs since December 1917, decided to destroy all representatives of the imperial family[2]. Having received no orders from the capital of Soviet Russia, F. L. Zadorozhny, not wanting to obey the will of the Yalta Council, decided to take advantage of the architectural features of the palace, turning it into a real fortress - here, under the protection of thick walls and machine guns installed on its walls, under the protection of a detachment of sailors of the Black Sea Fleet, subordinate to F. L. Zadorozhny, all members of the Romanov family in the Crimea were transferred from various estates - Grand Dukes Alexander Mikhailovich, Nikolai Nikolayevich and Peter Nikolaevich, also the family of Maria F. Zadorozhdor. The jagged walls of the palace were very convenient for machine gun nests. Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich himself became the right-hand man of F. L. Zadorozhny to develop measures for the defense of the palace. He, as a professional military man, helped to equip places for machine guns and calculated the fire sectors, helped the security to establish the work of searchlights. Numerous raids by armed detachments of anarchist-minded adherents of the Yalta Soviet never ended in an assault.[2] So they were saved and waited for the elimination of Soviet power as a result of the German entry into the Crimea. In April 1919, they emigrated from Russia on board the British cruiser Marlborough.[3] In 1922, in the estate of Dulbert, renamed the Red Banner, one of the first Soviet health resorts was opened, in which there were 35 places. In 1938, a second building was built, which had a similar Moorish appearance. During the Great Patriotic War, the palace complex was badly damaged, and in the postwar years it was restored by German and Romanian prisoners of war. Subsequently, high-ranking officials of the CPSU and communist parties of other countries rested there. It is currently a sanatorium. The natural boundaries of the palace and park complex form the Black Sea in the south, the Zaghmata River[4] in the east, the Hastabash mountain river in the west and the highway in the north.
Translated from the Crimean Tatar word "dulber" (Crimean-tat. dülber) means "beautiful", "beautiful" [5]. The palace, built in a romantic Moorish style, is a snow-white building with silver domes, arched windows and jagged walls. It is decorated with blue ornament and colored mosaic. Due to its whiteness, the palace stands out against the background of the Crimean mountains. Above the main entrance to the palace in Arabic script is the inscription: "May Allah bless him who entered here." Around the palace on several terraces there is a park that extends from the main entrance gate to the sea. It is decorated with sculptures, arbors, fountains and pools with water lilies. The pride of the park is the alley of fan palms around the round pool. The park has a miniature botanical garden with an area of 6 hectares, in which stone oaks, plane trees, mammoth tree, pistachios, cedars, pines, cypresses, sequoias, pines, olives, and roses grow.