Our Notes & References

This early twentieth-century panorama, taken from near the shoreline, shows the Black Sea port of Tuapse, in the southern tip of Russia, just north of the Caucasus. It is very rare to find early photographs of this location, or this region indeed, and this panorama is particularly remarkable for its almost 1.9 m length.

Originating as a Greek outpost on the Black Sea, the settlement was subsequently fought over by neighbouring peoples due to its strategic location. It was integrated into the Kingdom of Abkhazia before being taken by the Georgians in the Middle Ages who then lost the territory to the Circassians. The settlement became part of the Russian Empire in 1829 only to be seized by the Ottomans in the Crimean War. After the land returned to the Russian Empire, Tuapse was formally granted town status in 1896.

The extensive coastal construction pictured in the panorama is likely the installation of the North Caucasus Railway, which opened between Belorechenskaia and Tuapse in 1912. The line which starts in Rostov Oblast in the north stretches down through the Caucasus and skirts the coast of the Black Sea, running both freight and passenger services.

The annotation attributes the photograph to ‘Leiman’ (or Leyman), also the photographer of several photo-postcards of the region from the same period.