Anapa is a city with a rich history, a variety of natural and man-made attractions. The name of the city, according to different versions and from different languages, is translated as “edge of the table” (the city visually resembles the ledge of a table),
“mother’s cry” (there was once a slave market here),
“two sisters” (two bays).
Anapa is also known as the All-Russian children’s health resort. There are hundreds of family sanatoriums and boarding houses, and Pionersky Prospekt is specially designated for children – a 10-kilometer-long street, on both sides of which there are children’s camps.
Going here for the weekend will be interesting for residents of Krasnodar, Gelendzhik, Sochi, Stavropol, Rostov-on-Don, Pyatigorsk, Mineralnye Vody and other nearby cities, the journey from which will not take much time.
We will tell you in this article how to spend a weekend in Anapa interestingly and what you should definitely pay attention to.
Approximate travel budget for one person – from 4000 rubles*.
- Round-trip train tickets (from Krasnodar) from 838 rubles*. You can fly from Moscow to Anapa every day. Prices start from 3,872 rubles* one way. The flight lasts about 2 hours.
- 1 night in a hostel – from 300 rubles* or in a 3* hotel – from 1,100 rubles*.
- The average bill in a cafe is 300 rubles.
- Walks around the city, travel on public transport, souvenirs – 800 rubles.
Beaches: 40 kilometers along the sea
Photo: @dmitry230474/@seefromthesky /Instagram.com
When choosing Anapa, you won’t have to think long about whether it’s “pebbles or sand.” There is everything here: large boulders with small fish swimming near them, small pebbles, and wonderful golden sand with and without shells.
The beach is divided in the center of the city embankment: to the left is pebbles, to the right is sand. Therefore, when in Anapa you want to remember in which direction a specific settlement is located, then just pay attention to the shore. On the left and all the way to Utrish there are pebbles, on the right and up to the Bugaz Spit there is sand. And in the center is the only water ski stadium in Russia, located in the sea, a place of attraction for domestic and foreign athletes.
Lifehack! Closer to August, Anapa beaches are sometimes covered with mud washed ashore. But! Locals know one secret: there is no mud on a pebble beach. And there is much less of it in places where there are not very many tourists.
Pebble beach: Anapa (Small Bay, High Bank, descent of 40 Let Pobeda street),
Varvarovka village, Sukko village, Bolshoy Utrish village.
Sandy beach: Anapa (lower tier of the embankment),
Pionersky Avenue, Dzhemete, Vityazevo, Blagoveshchenskaya village.
Anapa lighthouse and cats
Photo: @kot_up/Sara Morán
Anapa City Embankment is a long street along the beaches, paved with tiles and long loved by cats, which is why the resort is often called the city of cats. They are everywhere, no one bothers them, they are loved here, and they brazenly take advantage of it.
There are many sculptures along the embankment. Some of them are a legacy of the Soviet era, while others are designed to entertain tourists. For example, a monument to a vacationer, where a muscular guy in glasses sunbathes in the sun. He is also called partridge (that’s what the locals call tourists).
So if you also heard “partridge”, then don’t worry. This means you are a real tourist, who is loved in Anapa.
Among the buildings along the way there are many interesting ones – in the form of cubes and sailboats, and the most notable will be the Anapa lighthouse – a faithful guardian of the bay, giving signals to ships at sea.
Together with the lighthouse, radar stations in the form of white balls, located on the top of Mount Lysaya, perform their service. These balls are popularly called “dinosaur eggs”, and a curious tourist will easily catch their eye.
Where is it located: on the Upper Embankment between Krepostnaya and Protapova streets
The legacy of Gorgippia or an open-air excavation
Photo: vk.com/museum_gorgippia
In the center of Anapa, within walking distance from all other city attractions, there is the Gorgippia Museum-Reserve.
It received its name in honor of the city, which in ancient times stood on the site of present-day Anapa and represented 40 hectares of land surrounded by fortress walls. Here once took place annual sports festivals – Hermei, where athletes from other kingdoms came and fought for the right to be the best of the best.
There is an excavation site on the museum grounds. During the excursion, the guide will tell you in more detail where the houses, streets, wineries, resting places and burial places were located. The city reached its greatest prosperity in the 1st-2nd centuries AD. e., becoming a major trade and craft center of the Bosporan kingdom.
From the time of its existence, enough valuable artifacts have remained, by which one can judge the wealth of the inhabitants and the type of their activity. The museum displays a permanent exhibition of that time.
Visit cost: 200 rubles
Address: Naberezhnaya street, 4
Social network page
Opening hours: Tue-Sun from 10 to 18, closed on Monday**
Monuments and the City of Military Glory
Russian Gate. Photo: @taxman_rus/Instagram.com
One article cannot cover everything that experienced guides can tell you about, but everyone who visits Anapa should know what it took to return this resort town to the borders of the Russian state.
Russian Gate – part of the fortress built by the Turks in 1783. This is the only surviving fragment of the line that Russian soldiers managed to overcome in 1828. The gates were named Russian in honor of the 25th anniversary of the liberation of Anapa from the Turkish yoke.
Next to the gate there is a bust of ataman Alexey Danilovich Bezkrovny, in 1828 the commander of a separate Taman detachment, consisting of Cossacks and regular units, who distinguished themselves during the capture fortress.
But earlier on these lands he distinguished himself in battles Ivan Vasilyevich Gudovich. Being the commander of the Kuban Corps and the head of the Caucasian line, he took Anapa by storm with a 7,000-strong detachment (June 22, 1791),
which was defended by a 15,000-strong Turkish garrison. A monument to him was erected near the Anapa Local History Museum, a block from the Anapa lighthouse.
Another name that everyone knows in Anapa is Dmitry Semenovich Kalinin– Hero of the Soviet Union, captain, commander of the 2nd reconnaissance detachment of the Black Sea Fleet Headquarters. Being surrounded and wounded, he did not surrender; having used up all the ammunition, he blew himself up, killing a total of up to 30 enemy soldiers. Noting the feat of the Soviet officer, the German commander, who led the defense in the Anapa region, ordered Dmitry Semyonovich Kalinin to be buried with full military honors. Now along the Varvarovka-Sukko road there is a large monument to Kalinin, which can be seen from the window of the shuttle bus.
Cypress Lake, African Village and Lion’s Head Castle
Photo: @nefedov391/Instagram.com
15 kilometers from Anapa is the village of Sukko, where American swamp cypress trees grow in the lake next to the village. Not all locals know about this natural attraction, and even more so tourists, but thanks to the development of the local infrastructure, the Sukko Valley is becoming more and more popular.
Near the lake there is another attraction for tourists – the Lion’s Head castle. Built in medieval English style, it welcomes over a thousand spectators daily during the season for its shows of armored knights, savage barbarians and brave Amazons. Every year, artists and directors stage a new play, so their stories are always interesting even to those who come to Anapa not for the first time. Under the castle arches there are dining rooms, pottery workshops, a shooting gallery and photo zones. Also, after each performance, you can take a photo with the artists or on horseback, with your blade raised up.
If you go around the castle on the left, you can find yourself in a real African village, where the aborigines developed a plot of land and created their own settlement there. In fact, this is the location of a dance theater with the participation of black artists who perform songs from the peoples of the world during daytime and evening shows, demonstrating costumes, history and telling about the culture of the peoples of Africa. The artists easily connect with the audience, involving them in a fun interactive program.
Where is located: the village of Sukko, 15 kilometers from Anapa
Cost of travel to the place by minibus: from 42 rubles
Lion’s Head Castle website
Ticket price for a performance in the castle: 500 rubles
Utrish Dolphinarium and Marine Aquarium “Batiskaf”
Photo: @delfinia_nsk/Instagram.com
There are two dolphinariums in Anapa, but the Utrish Dolphinarium is unique in its own way – the performance takes place in the sea. There are few marine dolphinariums in the world, but the Utrish one is the only one in Russia.
Here, Black Sea bottlenose dolphins, walruses, beluga whales, and northern fur seals are the most important residents and part-time artists. From Thursday to Sunday, a show is held in the dolphinarium’s pool in which a team of superheroes saves the Galaxy, where the role of the princess is played by a Pacific walrus. In addition to entertainment activities, the center conducts research and popularizes scientific knowledge about marine mammals.
In the marine aquarium “Batiscaphe” live the inhabitants of the Black Sea and freshwater reservoirs of the Kuban. Despite the fact that the Black Sea is considered one of the most sparsely inhabited seas on Earth, it is home to many interesting fish, for example, stingrays, flounder, redfish, sea ruffe, stargazer, sea dragon – all of them can be seen here – and other representatives marine flora.
Website of the Utrish Dolphinarium: delfinary.ru
Address of the marine aquarium “Batiskaf”: st. Protapova, 1/1
Ticket price to the dolphinarium (B. Utrish): 600 rubles
Ticket price to the marine aquarium (Anapa): 200 rubles
Water parks “Tiki-Tak”, “Golden Beach” and “Olympia”
Photo: vk.com/anapa_akvapark
In the center of Anapa there is the Golden Beach water park – the oldest and largest. Here you can go down the slides along open chutes, on racing mats and on special inflatable rings. Attractions of varying degrees of extremeness, both single and family, will not leave any visitor indifferent.
Waterpark “Olympia” – in the village of Vityazevo – a park in the Greek style, which has Anapa’s most impressive water attraction – a 24-meter high slide, equipped with a special capsule for a vertical launch. A person can slide down such a slide at a speed of up to 12 m/sec.
The Tiki-Tak water park is one of the largest in Europe in terms of displacement. There are 6 swimming pools, two dozen different attractions, foam parties and dancing in fountains take place every day.
Ticket price to water parks: from 1200 rubles
Website of the Golden Beach water park: anapa-akvapark.ru
Website of the Olympia water park: olympia-anapa.ru
Tiki-Tak water park website: akvapark-tikitak.ru
Musical fountains
Photo: @smirnovperm/Instagram.com
On the square in front of the city administration building there is a fountain complex with large (23 meters in diameter) and small (6 meters in diameter) fountains. Around 22:00 every day they all simultaneously begin to glow in different colors, the jets synchronously rise up to a height of up to 15 meters and fall down to the sounds of classical, jazz and modern works.
Where is: Central square of the city
Aquacomplex “Bora Bora”: an oasis in an oasis
Photo: bora-beach.ru
Bora Bora Beach Club Anapa is a fashionable vacation spot that combines not only bars and restaurants, 6 swimming pools, a climbing wall and a surfing attraction, but also a large and most popular dance floor. Last summer, the brightest performers of songs and electronic music of domestic and foreign show business performed here; the schedule of celebrity guests for this season includes: Arthur Pirozhkov, Hannah, Timati, Elena Temnikova, Linda, Egor Creed, Irina Dubtsova, MakSim, Basta, Mot and others.
Ticket price: from 1000 rubles
Cost of travel to the place by minibus: 28 rubles
Site: bora-beach.ru
Address: Pionersky Prospekt, 20 A
* Prices for travel and accommodation are indicated at the time of writing. The cost indicated in the material and the final price may vary depending on the season and time for which tickets are purchased.
**Operating hours of organizations are indicated at the time of publication of the text. Opening hours may vary depending on the time of year.
Text author: Gohar Anvesova
Preview photo: @tomasalas
