Set in a picturesque corner of Crimea's Black Sea coast, the Genoese fortress at Sudak ranks among the largest medieval fortifications in the region. Perched on a cone-shaped mountain, it offers sweeping views of the sea, framed by the Meganom and Ai-Foka capes, and the Sudak Valley stretching for more than eight kilometers. The stronghold was raised by Genoa in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the port, then called Soldaia, was a link in the trade routes carrying goods between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Two lines of walls climb the ridge, punctuated by towers named after the consuls who commissioned them, and rising to the citadel and watchtower on the summit above the harbor.
