Few places have been claimed by so many. The peninsula's commanding position in the Black Sea - Sevastopol's naval fortress is sometimes likened to Gibraltar - drew ancient Greeks, Persians, Romans, Goths, Huns, Khazars, and the Mongols, whose successor state was the Crimean Khanate. In 988, the Kievan Rus prince Vladimir the Great was baptized at the Byzantine outpost of Chersonesus, then returned north to convert his people - a hinge moment for Eastern Christianity, marked today by a cathedral outside Sevastopol. Russia took the peninsula in 1783, and Catherine the Great created the Taurida Oblast the following year. Every conqueror left something behind: a Greek colony, a khan's palace, an Orthodox shrine, a fortress. To walk Crimea is to read a stone palimpsest written in a dozen hands.

The most haunting sights lie inland, around Bakhchysarai in its canyon between Simferopol and Sevastopol. Here stands the Khan's Palace, seat of the Tatar rulers from the early 16th century, its grounds a quiet sprawl of gardens, mosques, and cemeteries. From the town, an hour-and-a-half walk up a beautiful canyon climbs to Chufut-Kale, a cave city dating to the sixth century, where thousands of people once dug their homes into the living limestone. It is only one of roughly fourteen such cave settlements scattered through these hills, each different in scale and drama. On the coast near Sevastopol, the Greek ruins of Chersonesus - nicknamed the "Ukrainian Pompeii" and the "Russian Troy" - spread their amphitheater and toppled columns along the shore, a city more than 2,500 years old.

Crimea rewards a hungry traveler. The street food skews rich and Tatar: chebureki, succulent half-moon meat pies deep-fried in aromatic sunflower oil; manti, steamed lamb dumplings served with fiery adjika; lagman, a thick lamb soup thick with hand-pulled noodles. On the beaches, women sell paklava built up into big flowers of fried dough, nuts, and honey. The peninsula is serious wine country, too, though a novice should beware: much of what is bottled at the famous Massandra winery is dessert wine in the style of Port or Madeira, meant to be sipped in tiny glasses, not swigged. Near Sudak, the sparkling wine of Novy Svet - "New Light" - is aged in cool caverns you can tour. For something older still, there is kumys, the fermented mare's milk of the steppe nomads.

The summers here are Mediterranean - hot, humid nights broken by thunderstorms that roll in and out - and the sea stays warm and clear well into the season. Hikers find something rare: mountains threaded with well-worn but unmarked trails, where you can pick two small towns, walk between them, and be guaranteed an adventure, camping in secluded fields under limestone peaks. The coast holds its grander memories too - Livadia Palace, where the Yalta Conference met in 1945, and the whimsical Swallow's Nest perched on its crag. Threaded through all of it is the story of the Crimean Tatars, the peninsula's indigenous people, who endured mass deportation under Stalin and whose language and cuisine still flavor the land they call Qirim. Their return has helped keep Crimea's oldest voice from falling silent.