Military History Tour: Balaclava and Submarine Base - 35th Coastal Battery – Diorama and Sapun Hill

Cost of the tour: for the group of 4 visitors - 70 EUR per person
Hotel pick up and drop off
Itinerary: Hotel – Sapun hill (Diorama) - Balaclava – Submarine Base – Kazachya Bay - 35th Coastal Battery - Hotel
Duration: 7 hours
Size of the group – 4 – 17 tourists
Transportation: Mercedes Vito, Mercedes Sprinter
Entry tickets to all visited tourist attractions
Excursion is carried out in: English, German, French, Spanish

Hidden military history of Soviet period is now available for you to explore on this military 7-hour bus tour consisted of three parts: a tour to Sapun – hill including visiting Diorama museum, Balaclava Tour including visiting of a former Top-Secret Submarine Base today transformed into Naval Museum complex “Balaclava”, and a tour to 35th Coastal Battery. You will get acquainted with some of the most notable monuments of Sevastopol military history.

Sapun hill highlights: Monument to 51 Army – Exposition of Naval and Overland Weaponry – Observation Desk of Sapun Hill - Diorama Museum – Tanks and Armours of WWII - Obelisk of Glory with Eternal Flame – Orthodox Chapel.

Balaclava Tour Highlights: Balaclava City tour - Naval Museum complex Balaklava: Soviet Top Secret Submarine Base including: entrance to the canal (underground gallery), floating dam, mine-torpedo department and fuel storage department, arsenal, deep-water canal and dry submarine dock, transportation corridors and passages, arsenal transportation rails, a pattern – a transportation corridors fork, anti-nuclear safety gates, sluice chamber, torpedoes and cruise missile warheads storage, arsenal loading platform, rooms for personnel and officers.

Tour to 35^th Battery Highlights: Kazachya Bay - Museum Complex of 35^th Coastal Battery – Underground hospital and operating rooms - Crew and command rooms – Underground corridors - Firing post – Powder magazine - Emergency exits.

Tour details:

Your guide in the excursion minivan / bus is meeting you at a hotel’s entrance (or another place as you wish).

You will head to Sapun hill, a place of the most important war battles. World-known Charge of the Light Brigade took place at the foot of Sapun hill in 1855, the period of the Crimean war. Desperate bloody battles of siege and liberation of Sevastopol took place here in 1942 and 1944 during the World War II. From the viewing platform overlooking notorious Valley of Death you will hear guide’s narrative about the battles and will visit the Diorama museum exhibiting a huge circular picture of WWII battle. Near Diorama there is an open-air exhibition of military equipment, armoured carriers tanks, Katyusha rocket launcher and many other military vehicles.

You head to Balaclava where a former nuclear submarine base of the Soviet times had been located. The tour details the history of the base turned into the Naval Museum complex “Balaklava”; you will learn the most interesting facts about operating of the base and its functions. Your guide will tell you how safe such underground base would have been in a case of an atomic stroke.

Trip to Balaclava includes visiting the top secret submarine plant located inside of rocky mountain, and a Balaclava city tour where you will learn the history of the place from its foundation over XXV centuries ago to these days. We can stop for coffee and light snacks in a café or visit the emblem of Balaclava, Genoese Fortress situated on a rocky cliff above the mouth of the bay of Balaclava.

On the last part of the tour, the bus will take you to the 35^th coastal battery in Kazachya Bay. It is famed for being the last pocket of resistance of Soviet troops in Sevastopol during the WWII; the battery is a unique coastal fortification of the first half of XX century. Hidden 6 meters under the ground, the battery narrates its tragic and heroic story of the WWII.

In the end of the tour we will take you back to the hotel, or on your wish, to centre of Sevastopol. You will get acquainted with some of the most notable historical monuments of the city..

NB: This tour involves a considerable amount of walking, so comfortable shoes and some drinking water is advisable. Visiting underground constructions: submarine plant and the battery may require warm clothes, the temperature in these museums is 15 C degrees.

Cost of the tour: for the group of 4 - 17 visitors - 70 EUR per person

This tour suits for a small tourist group of 4-6 visitors and for a larger group of 7-17 visitors.

For the group of 4 – 6 visitors we offer comfortable air-conditioned minivan
For the group 7 – 17 visitors – comfortable bus Mercedes Sprinter

The tour includes: