Country Article / Postcards
Visit Alexander The Great's Empire For $1
Date: 02/21/2007
It is here that bronzed beauties sun themselves on ancient stonework, and children kick footballs through marble columns.
International Living Postcards-- your daily escape
Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007
Khersones, Ukraine
Used to the history around them, most Ukrainians come to Khersones not to sightsee, but to take advantage of its beach. It is here that bronzed beauties sun themselves on ancient stonework, footballs are kicked by children through marble columns, and lovers walk hand in hand across the remains of mosaic floors.
I put on a mask and snorkel and swim out into the water to see what I can discover. And here, in the warm paradise of southern Ukraine, I swim above the ruins, floating in the calm, cool waters of history.
Floating facedown in the dark-blue waters of the Black Sea I watch fish nibble at the northernmost outpost of Alexander the Great’s empire. Some three feet below me are algae-covered house foundations, several of the hundreds that made up Khersones, an ancient Greek city half-submerged off the coast of Ukraine’s southern peninsula.
Like many of the entrance prices in Ukraine, I fond Khersones’ amazingly cheap; $1, not including the 35 cents for the 10-minute minibus from the city of Sevastopol (the minibus leaves every 15 minutes from the bazaar).
Although rising sea levels have claimed the majority of Khersones, the rest of it spreads for miles along the coast, a network of roads, fountains, foundations, and wells. Also at Khersones is St. Volodomyr Cathedral, a beautiful Orthodox church built over the site where Volodomyr the Great accepted Christianity, converting his entire kingdom--from which sprang Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus--with him.
Along the shore, I notice hundreds of reddish-brown shards among the pebbles. A friend tells me that they are ancient pieces of pottery. He picks up the shard and points at the thin horizontal marks along its inside curve that prove it was handmade. Almost all the goods the Greeks shipped by sea were stored in clay jars. Abandoned and broken on the beach, the remains of the jars now go unnoticed because they are so ubiquitous, ignored by the Ukrainians who spread a towel over them to lie in the sun.
To the locals, this is normal. But to an American whose country is barely a couple of centuries old and who is used to seeing such things only through panes of glass, the opportunity pick up something so old and run my fingers along it is amazing.
Daniel Reynolds Riveiro
For International Living
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P.S. The museum at Khersones is disappointing. Since most of the artifacts recovered from the site are at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the museum can only display holographic pictures of them.
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