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Balaklava (Ukrainian and , , ) is a settlement on the Crimean Peninsula and part of the city of Sevastopol. It is an administrative center of Balaklavsky District that used to be part of the Crimean Oblast before it was transferred to Sevastopol Municipality. Population:
During the Middle Ages, it was controlled by the Byzantine Empire and then by the Genoese who conquered it in 1365. The Byzantines called the town Yamboli and the Genoese named it Cembalo. The Genoese built a large trading empire in both the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, buying slavery in Eastern Europe and shipping them to Egypt via the Crimea, a lucrative market hotly contested with by the Venetians.
The ruins of a Genoa fortress positioned high on a clifftop above the entrance to the Balaklava Inlet are a popular tourism attraction and have recently become the stage for a medieval festival. The fortress is a subject of Mickiewicz's penultimate poem in his 1826 cycle of Crimean Sonnets.
In 1475, Cembalo City was conquered by the Turks and was subsequently renamed Balyk-Yuva (Fish's Nest) which then became Balaklava.Sergei R. Grinevetsky, et al. ” The Black Sea Encyclopedia”, Springer, 2014: 80–81.
During the Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774, the Russian troops invaded Crimea in 1771. Thirteen years later, Crimea was definitively annexed by the Russian Empire. After that, the Crimean Tatar and Turkish population was forcefully replaced by Greek Orthodox people from the Archipelago.
The town became famous for the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War thanks to the suicidal Charge of the Light Brigade, a British cavalry charge due to a misunderstanding sent up a valley strongly held on three sides by the Russians, in which about 250 men were killed or wounded, and over 400 horses lost, effectively reducing the size of the mounted brigade by two thirds and destroying some of the finest light cavalry in the world to no military purpose.Terry Brighton, Hell Riders: The Truth about the Charge of the Light Brigade. London: Penguin, 2005. New York: Henry Holt, 2005. Alfred, Lord Tennyson immortalized the battle in verse in his Charge of the Light Brigade.
The balaclava, a tight knitted garment covering the whole head and neck with holes for the eyes and mouth, also takes its name from this settlement, where soldiers first wore them. Also numerous towns founded in English-speaking countries in later parts of the 19th century were named "Balaklava" (see Balaklava (disambiguation)).
In 1954, Balaklava, together with the whole of Crimea, was transferred from the Russian FSFR to the Ukrainian SSR. In 1957 it was formally incorporated into the municipal borders of Sevastopol by the Soviet Union government and lost city status. Upon the break-up of the USSR, the town, along with the entire Crimean peninsula, became constituent parts of the modern state of Ukraine. There are dozens of monuments in the town dedicated to the remembrance of military valor in past wars, including the Great Patriotic War, the Crimean War and the Russian Civil War.
Since the internationally unrecognized 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, Balaklava, along with rest of Crimea, is administered by Russia. In 2019 Russian authorities granted Balaklava status of a city within Sevastopol.
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