Simferopol

According to the legend town were named Simferopol because of its location: “simferopolis” in old Greek “town-collector”, “town on crossing”. Besides, while establishing Simferopol in the name was put another sense – “town of profit”, “profit town”. Legend is legend but it has lucky matching: town which from the beginning has a role of “collector”, center of Crimea, is on the crossing of roads, which connect north, south, west and east of peninsular.

Simferopol is situated on the joint of mountains and prairies: old its part and new neighborhood units take space basin between Internal and Outside chain of Crimean mountains. The height of the region is between 738-984 feet over the sea, growing to the south-east where the highest point is Petrovskie cliffs. Main town of Crimea is tied to the river Salgir” more than on 5,58 miles is spread along its shores town sections.

It is hard to name the epoch which did not left here anything. Paleolithic is cave Chokurcha (east outskirt of the town, on the left side of the river Small Salgir), Mesolithic – where now is Simferopol water reserve, Neolithic – there and in some other places, Eniolithic, epochs bronze and etc. In the nearest localities of the town were found monuments of later time: Taurus – under Petrovskie cliffs, early medieval – in the old suburb Zhigulin Grove, medieval and late medieval – on the st. Shpolanskiy and Vorovskiy. A lot of stops, settlements, hills, burial ground show that on the place of present Simferopol human lives not less than 40-50 thousands years.

In ancient time, from III B.C. on the south-east outskirt were Scythian town with Greek name Neapol, the capital of late Scythian country. With emperors Skilur and his son Palak (II B.C.) town has the time of prosperity, led active trading with Chersonese and later successful military actions against it. Diggs showed that Neapol Scythian, which took the square more than 49 acres, was good strengthened and presented big trade and handicraft center. In III century it was suffer from Gothallans and next century Hun destructed it.

In the middle of the century on this almost deserted but still alive, for a long time here exist Greek village. Later in XV century near it appear Tartar settlement, with time small town Ak-Mechet – the right predecessor of Simferopol. With joining Crimea to Russia Ak-Mechet became the center of new Taurus region.

In February 1784 duck G.A. Potemkin showed the project “About administrative arrangement of Taurus region”. Construction works began in summer or autumn of that year. That the official date when Simferopol was established is 9 July 1784.