Phanagoria Science and Cultural Centre (Sennoy)

The Phanagoria Science and Cultural Centre is the research base of the Phanagoria archaeological expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, on the edge of the village of Sennoy in the Temryuk district of Krasnodar Krai, about twenty kilometres from Taman. It stands by the Eastern Necropolis of ancient Phanagoria and is part of the Phanagoria museum-reserve: finds from the excavations of the ancient city on the Taman Peninsula are stored, studied and restored here.

History

Phanagoria was an ancient Greek city on the Kerch Strait, founded around 543 BC by settlers from Teos. It lasted for more than fifteen hundred years, until the early 10th century AD, and was the Asian capital of the Bosporan Kingdom; Strabo called it the most important city of the kingdom's Asian part. The first digs in the necropolis were made in the late 18th century, after Taman became part of Russia, by the military engineer Vanderweide. Systematic research began in 1936 with an expedition of the Museum of Fine Arts led by A. P. Smirnov and V. D. Blavatsky, and it has continued every year since, broken only by the war. Today the city is studied by the Phanagoria expedition of the Institute of Archaeology, led by V. D. Kuznetsov.

Since 2004 the expedition has been supported by the Volnoe Delo charitable foundation, which paid for building and equipping the centre next to the excavations. Construction was finished in 2012, and the centre officially opened on 3 October 2012 with an international symposium on the ancient heritage of the Kuban. In April 2014 the government established the Phanagoria state historical and archaeological museum-reserve.

Inside the centre

The centre works all year round as the expedition's base. It is building the largest research library on classical archaeology in southern Russia, covering the ancient, Roman and Byzantine history of southern Russia and Crimea, as well as Greece, Rome, Byzantium and early Christianity. It also has restoration laboratories and storerooms where the finds are kept and restored under an agreement with the Ministry of Culture: coins, painted pottery, gold jewellery, marble sculpture. Epigraphists, a numismatist, an anthropologist, an archaeozoologist, conservators and GIS and hydroacoustics specialists work with the expedition, and the centre also trains young archaeologists and classicists.

Finds and legends

Phanagoria has produced some of the best-known discoveries of recent years. In 2004 an underwater excavation found the tombstone of Hypsicratea, companion of King Mithridates. The digs confirmed a Jewish community in the city, and the remains of its synagogue are considered the oldest Jewish temple found in Russia. Tradition holds that in the 7th century Khan Kubrat made Phanagoria the capital of Old Great Bulgaria, and in the late 7th century the exiled Byzantine emperor Justinian II lived here.

Getting there

Sennoy lies on the road between Temryuk and Taman. Buses run from Temryuk, Taman and Anapa; from Krasnodar, take the A-289 to Temryuk and then head for Sennoy. The nearest railway stations are Anapa and Taman, with buses or taxis on to the village. Visitors can enter the research centre only on a guided tour of the museum-reserve, which shows the researchers' work from the inside. Check the schedule and tickets with the museum-reserve in advance.