Phanagoria

Listen first. On a calm day, the loudest sound here is the wind moving through dry grass, and somewhere below the low cliff, small waves are folding onto the shore of Taman Bay. The ground under your feet is soft, pale earth, full of tiny fragments. Look closely and some of those fragments are not stones at all. They are broken pottery, left by people who lived on this exact spot more than two thousand years ago.

This is Phanagoria, an ancient city on the Taman Peninsula, beside the village of Sennoy in southern Russia. Today it looks like open fields, excavation trenches and a quiet coastline. But for well over a thousand years, a working city stood here. It had streets, temples, workshops, houses, a harbour and a large cemetery. It is often described as one of the largest ancient Greek city sites in Russia, and archaeologists have been digging here for generations.

The story begins on the far side of the Black Sea. According to ancient Greek writers, the city was founded around the middle of the sixth century before Christ by settlers from Teos. Teos was a Greek city on the coast of what is now western Turkey. Its people left their home when the Persian Empire pushed into their region. Ancient tradition links the city's name to a leader of those colonists, a man called Phanagoras. Treat that detail as tradition rather than certain fact.

Why would Greek settlers sail so far north and east? Look around and the answer is partly in the land itself. The Taman Peninsula sits between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. It controlled trade routes into the steppe and toward the rivers of the north. Grain, fish and other goods moved through this coast. For a Greek trading city, this was a good position — a doorway between the Mediterranean world and the peoples of the open plains.

In time, Phanagoria became one of the key cities of the Bosporan Kingdom. This was a Greek-speaking state that grew up on both sides of the Kerch Strait, the narrow channel that links the two seas. Its main capital stood across the water, at the city the Greeks called Panticapaeum, where modern Kerch stands today. Phanagoria was the leading city on the Asian side. Historians often call it the kingdom's second capital.

Here is a moment from the history books that many visitors miss. In the first century before Christ, the region fell under Mithridates the Sixth, the king of Pontus and one of Rome's most stubborn enemies. Late in his life, Phanagoria rose against him. Ancient sources say the rebels captured members of his family. The revolt spread to other cities, and soon afterwards Mithridates died in Panticapaeum. A small city on this shore helped to close one of the great dramas of the ancient world.

Now turn and face the water. Part of ancient Phanagoria is no longer on land at all. Over the centuries, the level of the sea rose, and a large section of the lower city slipped beneath the bay. Divers and underwater archaeologists now work there, mapping walls, harbour structures and objects on the seabed. So when you look out across these quiet waves, you are also looking at streets that are now covered by water.

The city did not end when the classical Greek world faded. Its population changed many times. Over the centuries, Greeks, local peoples of the region, and later groups from the steppe all left their mark here. Inscriptions found at Phanagoria also show the presence of a Jewish community in late antiquity. This mix of languages and beliefs is one of the things that makes the site so valuable to historians. It was never a city frozen in a single age.

Then comes a second surprise. In the early medieval period, this region came under the influence of the Khazars, a powerful people of the steppe. Byzantine chronicles tell how the exiled emperor Justinian the Second escaped to this area around the start of the eighth century. He found protection among the Khazars and married a Khazar princess, who later became known as Theodora. Not long afterwards, he returned to Constantinople and took back his throne.

Phanagoria slowly declined in the centuries that followed. By around the tenth century, the old city had largely been abandoned. People moved elsewhere, buildings fell, and earth and sand covered the ruins. The large burial ground outside the city, with its low mounds, stayed in the landscape. Over time, those mounds became one of the clearest signs that something important had once stood here.

Modern archaeological work began in the nineteenth century, and it has continued in different forms ever since. In recent decades, the excavations have become large and well organised, with seasonal teams working both on land and under water. The site is now protected as a museum and archaeological reserve. If you visit in summer, you may see students and researchers in the trenches, brushing soil from the edges of walls one thin layer at a time.

That slow work is worth watching for a moment. Each layer of earth represents a different stage of the city's life. Deep down are the earliest Greek levels. Higher up are later centuries — Roman, early medieval, and beyond. The trench walls often show bands of different colours: ash from fires, clay from collapsed buildings, lighter soil from periods of quiet. Reading those bands is how archaeologists rebuild the story you have just heard.

Before you leave, stand still once more. Feel the wind coming off the bay, and look at the line where the pale cliff meets the water. Somewhere under your feet, and somewhere under those waves, the old city is still there. As you walk back toward Sennoy, glance down at the ground now and then. That small curved piece of red clay might be the edge of a cup that someone held here, long before any of today's countries existed.