Balaklava
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- For other uses, see Balaklava (disambiguation).
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Balaklava is a section of the city of Sevastopol, in the Crimea region of Ukraine. It was made famous by on October 25, 1854, when a mix up of orders led to the famously suicidal Charge of the Light Brigade, a cavalry charge down a heavy defended Russian position in which more than two thirds of the men in the charge were killed or wounded, with a total of 500 deaths. The British poet Alfred Tennyson wrote a famous poem on this charge.
A city in its own right until 1957, when it was officially incorporated into Sevastopol by the Soviet government, Balaklava has changed hands many times during history. It was originally founded by the Ancient Greeks, for whom it was an important commercial city. During the Middle Ages, it was controlled by the Genoese (to whom the city was known as Cembalo) who conquered it in 1365. The Genoese built up a large trading empire in both the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, buying slaves in Eastern Europe and shipping them to Egypt via the Crimea, a lucrative market hotly contested with by the Venetians. It was supposedly on board a Genoese trading cog sailing back to Genoa from Balaklava that the Black Death first arrived in Europe. The ruins of a Genoese fortress remain a popular tourist attraction to this day.
In 1475 the growing Ottoman Empire took Balaklava, calling it Balyk-Yuve ("fish nest" in Turkish), which was slowly corrupted over time to its present name. In 1771, Russian forces overran the Crimea.
In 1787 the city was visited by Catherine the Great.
During the Second World War, Balaklava was the southernmost point in the Soviet-German lines.
In 1991 Balaklava, together with the whole Crimea, became a part of the independent state of Ukraine.
Today there are over 50 monuments in the city dedicated to the remembrance of military valour in past wars, including the Great Patriotic War, the Crimean War and the Russian Civil War.