Balaklava [Балаклава]. Map: IX-14. City raion of Sevastopоl, located on a deep bay of the same name. Until 1957 it was a separate city in Crimea oblast and a health resort. In the middle of the first millennium BC Plakii (Palakii), a settlement of the Taurians, was located here; afterwards it became a Greek colony (see Ancient states on the northern Black Sea coast). It was conquered in 1357 by the Genoese, in 1475 by the Turks (with whom the name Balaklava originated), and in 1783 by the Russians. During the Crimean War (1853–6) the British troops landed here.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]