Karadag Biostation in Kurortnoye

The Karadag Biostation is located in the village of Kurortnoye, at the foot of the Karadag Reserve Mountain range. It was founded in 1914, and since 1963 it has become a branch of the Academy of Sciences. The staff of the biostation has been planting rare plants and trees here for a hundred years, creating a beautiful botanical garden.  

If you want to visit the Karadag Nature Reserve, then you can start the tour only at the Karadag Biostation in the village of Kurortnoye. Free access to Karadag is closed because it is a nature reserve. If you decide to go there from the side of Koktebel, then on all the paths you will see fences and foresters who forbid passage. Excursions to Karadag are organized twice a day from the Karadag Biostation. 

Karadag biostation was founded in 1901 by Professor of Moscow University Terenty Vyazemsky. He began to build it at his own expense, but from a financial point of view, his project failed. With the support of other people, Terenty Vyazemsky built and opened a Biostation in May 1914, but he died in September 1914. After his death, the Karadag Biostation was named after Vyazemsky. In 1963, it ceased to work as an independent scientific institution and became part of the Academy of Sciences.

For tourists, the botanical garden of the Karadag Biostation is of interest. It occupies an area of 1 hectare. There are more than 100 different trees and plants growing here, brought from different regions of the world. A bust of Terenty Vyazemsky is installed near the building of the Biostation.  

Next to the Biostation is the Karadag Dolphinarium, founded in 1977. This is the first dolphinarium of the Soviet Union, where the behavior of dolphins has been studied for several decades. Every day there are show programs that tourists come to see from all the surrounding resorts, from Feodosia to Sudak. 

The Karadag Biostation houses the Karadag History and Nature Museum. If you want to visit Karadag with an excursion, then before that go to this museum. Here you can learn a lot of interesting things about the eruption of the volcano and the subsequent formation of the unique ecosystem of the Karadag Reserve.