Alushta

Alushta is a resort city on the southern coast of the Crimean peninsula, lying on the Black Sea along the road that runs from Gurzuf to Sudak and served by the Crimean Trolleybus line. Internationally it is recognised as part of Ukraine's Autonomous Republic of Crimea, though it has been occupied by the Russian Federation, which administers it as part of its own Republic of Crimea. The 2014 census recorded 29,078 residents. The surrounding country is arid and rocky because the Crimean Mountains rise close behind the coast, and the city has a humid subtropical climate that borders on a hot-summer Mediterranean one. Its name goes back to the Byzantine Alouston, meaning unwashed, taken from a fortress whose defensive tower still partly survives, and under Genoese rule, which left a fifteenth-century fortress here, the name was modified to Lusta. The poet Adam Mickiewicz dedicated two of his Crimean Sonnets to the place.