Mangup Mountain Annunciation Monastery

In the Middle Ages a cave monastery existed in the southern rock face of the Mangup plateau, near the village of Zalisne in the Bakhchysaray district of Crimea, within the Simferopol Diocese; in the scholarly literature it is called the "South Monastery" of Mangup².

The Mangup plateau was already settled from the second half of the third century; in the second half of the sixth century, on Byzantine initiative, a strong fortress and a large basilica were built here - it has been suggested that this was the site of Doros, the centre of Byzantine possessions in mountainous Crimea³. In the 780s the settlement was seized by the Khazars, and by the middle of the ninth century power had passed back to Byzantium³. By the middle of the fourteenth century the settlement had taken the name Feodoro and become the capital of the principality of that name: building on the plateau grew denser, and a citadel was erected³.

At the end of the fourteenth century Mangup was sacked by Timur (Tamerlane), and from the first quarter of the fifteenth century the principality of Feodoro experienced its highest flourishing - the citadel was reconstructed, and the cave monasteries and churches were expanded³. In 1475, after a long siege, the principality of Feodoro fell under Ottoman assault; in the eighteenth century the Turkish garrison and the last inhabitants left the mountain³.

The monuments of Mangup were described and studied in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the first excavations here were carried out by O. Uvarov in 1853, and thorough ones by expeditions led by Ye. Veimarn (1967-1974) and O. Herzen (from 1975)⁴.

An artificial tunnel led to the monastery from a small natural grotto at the foot of the cliff, which opened onto the edge of a platform in a large grotto in the middle part of the cliff².

In the eastern part of this grotto stood a church, in the centre and north of which three graves with ledges were cut into the floor; fresco paintings once covered the apse, the arch over the altar, and the frieze above the arch². Near the entrance to the church was a breach into a rectangular chamber, probably a former sacristy or cell, and in the western part of the grotto four more chambers were cut, probably cells².

The scholar Yuri Mogarichev dated this house most probably to the first half of the fifteenth century².

At the beginning of the twenty-first century monastic life was revived at the house, and it took the name of the Annunciation².

On 23 December 2010 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Journal No. 63), having heard the report of His Grace Lazar, Metropolitan of Simferopol and Crimea, blessed the opening of the men's Mangup Mountain Annunciation Monastery. The document names the place of opening as the village of Krasnyy Mak, Bakhchysaray district, in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea¹.