Sevastopol builds its culture around the sea: a marine art museum in a 1899 mansion, the Lunacharsky Russian Drama Theatre with its gilded interior, and Soviet mosaics on Bolshaya Morskaya. Note the travel advisory for Crimea before planning.
Nakhimov Prospekt 9, in a 1899 Renaissance-revival mansion with caryatids. Some 8,000 works: Levitan, Aivazovsky seascapes, Dutch and Italian old masters, plus the collection Kroshitsky evacuated by train in 1941. Wed-Sun 10:00-17:00.
Suvorova Street 3, a Byzantine-revival church (1854-1888, architects Kaskarov and Avdeyev) in grey Inkerman stone. The lower church holds the tombs of Nakhimov, Kornilov, Istomin and Lazarev under black marble crosses.
The post-1945 reconstruction of Sevastopol as a unified architectural work: Inkerman limestone façades, arcaded ground floors, loggias and pilasters designed under Barkhin and Trautman. Walk from Ushakov Square to Lazarev Square.
The Historic Boulevard's sculpture programme: the 1956 monument to sailor Pyotr Koshka, the Totleben memorial with its bronze figures of sappers, and the surviving bastion IV earthworks used as an open-air sculpture setting.
Nakhimov Prospekt 6, rebuilt 1957 by architect Vasily Pelevin with a colonnaded portico and a gilded, chandeliered main hall of about 850 seats. Repertoire runs Ostrovsky, Chekhov and contemporary Russian drama.
The Artbukhta strip along Artillery Bay hosts craft studios, small commercial galleries and street painters selling marine watercolours and Crimean landscape oils. Studios open irregularly from about noon into the evening.
Nakhimov Prospekt 2, founded 1897 as Russia's first public aquarium and part of the Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas. Five halls of Black Sea and tropical species in the original circular pool architecture.
Evening curtain is typically 18:30 or 19:00. Dress is smart-casual, and the buffet on the mezzanine serves interval coffee and pastries under the theatre's 1950s stucco cornices.
Novikova Street 21 in Balaklava, covering the Genoese Cembalo fortress, the Greek Balaklava Battalion and the British camp of 1854-55. Displays include Genoese ceramics and Crimean War-era photographs of the harbour.
Rubtsova Street 41, dating to 1794 on earlier Genoese foundations, with a Doric portico and an inscription plaque above the entrance. A small single-nave interior with a modest iconostasis and 19th-century Greek-community memorials.
Tavricheskaya Naberezhnaya 22, the Cold War submarine base tunnelled into Mount Tavros, now a museum of underground engineering with a 600 m canal gallery, blast doors and exhibition halls on Soviet naval design.
Balaklava's terraced winery hosts tastings and an open-air amphitheatre used for summer jazz and classical concerts, with the vineyards of the Balaklava valley as the backdrop and a tasting room in the production building.