History of Adler

Modern Adler is the southern edge of Greater Sochi and part of the 2014 Olympic landscape, but its past stretches far beyond the resort era. On a narrow strip of land between the sea and the Caucasus foothills, ancient tribes, Genoese merchants, Ottoman traders, Ubykh nobility and Russian garrisons succeeded one another, and on their traces grew the seaside settlement familiar today. The chronology here was formed from slow layers and sharp turning points, and the easiest way to understand resort Adler is to walk through them one by one.

From Paleolithic camps to the Genoese trading post

The earliest traces of humans in the vicinity of Adler date back to the Early Paleolithic. In the canyon on the right bank of the Mzymta lies the Akhshtyr Cave — a site discovered in 1936 by an expedition led by Sergei Zamyatnin. Its cultural deposit layers reach back tens of thousands of years, and for the Black Sea coast it is one of the key Paleolithic monuments.

Ancient authors placed scattered tribes in this area — Achaeans, Heniochi, Zikhs, Sanigi; they were described by Strabo and later Byzantine chroniclers. The successive coastal settlements lived by trade and piracy, controlling a short but convenient stretch of shore between the Caucasus passes and the sea.

In the late Middle Ages, the Genoese established themselves along the coast. Their 14th–15th century maps mark here the trading post of Liash (or Layso) — a small commercial point through which wine, olives, fabrics and slaves passed. After the fall of Kaffa in 1475, the Genoese network in the Caucasus collapsed, and at the same time the northeastern corner of the Black Sea fell within the sphere of influence of the Ottoman Empire.

In the 17th century, the Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi mentions the port of Artlar in these parts — a landing of the Art (Ard) clan of the Abkhaz-Adyghe nobility. It is from this form, through the distortions of maps and oral retellings, that the present name of the city is derived: “Artlar → Ardlar → Adler.” The version about the German word Adler (“eagle”) emerged later as a folk etymology and is not established in academic literature.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the lands around the mouth of the Mzymta were held by the Ubykhs and the Abkhaz Sadz society. Their villages stood on the slopes and in the river valley, and small harbors along the shore handled trade with the Ottoman Empire — including the slave trade. This stretch of coast remained one of the most independent in the entire Caucasus.

The 1837 landing and the Fort of the Holy Spirit

In the 1830s, Russia was building the Black Sea Coastal Line — a chain of fortifications meant to seal off the coast from Ottoman influence and smuggling. The cape at the mouth of the Mzymta was an obvious point: a convenient anchorage, access to the passes, and a densely populated mountain coastline.

On June 7, 1837, the Black Sea squadron of Rear Admiral Samuil Esmont approached Cape Adler — eleven ships drew up along the shore in a battle line about three and a half kilometers long. The landing was commanded by Major General Vladimir Dmitrievich Volkhovsky, chief of staff of the Separate Caucasian Corps; overall leadership of the campaign remained with the commander of the Caucasian Line, General Alexander Velyaminov. The landing was carried out in three columns, which included the Georgian Grenadier, Tiflis and Mingrelian regiments, a company of the Caucasian Sapper Battalion, and militia from Georgia, Imereti and Mingrelia.

In one of the boats of the first wave was Ensign of the Georgian Grenadier Regiment Alexander Alexandrovich Bestuzhev-Marlinsky — a Decembrist and Romantic writer demoted to the ranks after the 1825 uprising and transferred to the Caucasus. Commanding a rifle platoon, he pushed into the coastal thickets and was caught in a firefight with the highlanders; wounded, he did not leave the battle. Bestuzhev’s body was never found — later, at the supposed site of his death, a few kilometers from the mouth of the Mzymta, a park bearing his name was laid out.

On June 18, 1837, on the captured cape, the Holy Spirit fortification was founded — a fort with an earthen rampart, barracks and a church, designed for a garrison of several companies. It became one of the southern strongholds of the Black Sea Coastal Line together with the forts of Lazarev, Velyaminovsky, Navaginsky and Alexandria (the present-day center of Sochi). The garrison lived hard: malaria, scurvy, a shortage of fresh water and constant pressure from Ubykh detachments made service here one of the deadliest in the Caucasus.

The Crimean War, the pacification of the Caucasus and resettlement

In 1854, with the outbreak of the Crimean War and the appearance of the Anglo-French fleet off the coast, it became impossible to hold the scattered forts of the Black Sea Coastal Line. The garrisons were evacuated by sea, the fortifications blown up; the Fort of the Holy Spirit was abandoned and razed. For several years the coast was once again in the hands of the Ubykhs and the Sadz.

The war in the Western Caucasus resumed after it had ended in Crimea and was only completed in the spring of 1864. On May 21, 1864, in the upper reaches of the Mzymta, at the Kbaada tract (today’s Krasnaya Polyana), a parade of Russian troops was held, symbolically marking the end of the Caucasian War. This event was directly related to the future of Adler: the indigenous population of the Black Sea coast — the Ubykhs, the Sadz, the Shapsugs — almost entirely left their native lands and resettled in the Ottoman Empire. This exodus, known as the muhajirism, emptied the valleys and the coast; the Ubykh language eventually disappeared altogether.

The government began to resettle the depopulated territory anew. From the mid-1860s, retired soldiers, Cossacks and state peasants from the central provinces were sent here, and along with them — Christian communities from the Balkans and Asia Minor: Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Moldovans, Estonians. In the Mzymta valley and on the slopes, Estonian villages appeared (Esto-Sadok, Esto-Adler), as well as Greek and Armenian villages; in Adler itself, the Russian garrison topography mixed with the colorful settler one.

1869 is considered the founding date of the village of Adler as a permanent civilian settlement. The name was preserved from the Ubykh-Abkhaz “Artlar,” although the name Nizhne-Imeretinskaya also appeared in the papers.

From a settlers’ village to a resort

The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century for Adler was a slow development of the subtropical plain. Malaria was defeated here gradually: around the mouth of the Mzymta eucalyptus trees were planted, swamps were drained, mosquitofish were released into the wetlands. Tea plantations, mandarin and tobacco farms, and trout ponds in the Mzymta valley appeared.

In 1910, the mayor of St. Petersburg Daniil Drachevsky laid out a park on land he had purchased, which is today known as “Yuzhnye Kultury” (Southern Cultures). The project was drawn up by the landscape architect Arnold Regel, with the work on site led by the Czech gardener Roman Skrivanik; over five years they assembled a collection of about 370 rare tree species — Japanese sakura, Himalayan cedars, bamboo groves. The park survived the revolution, two wars and several hurricanes, and still operates as a monument of landscape gardening art.

After the revolution of 1917 and the Civil War, Adler developed as an agricultural and resettlement center. In 1927 it was granted the status of a dacha settlement, in 1934 — that of a workers’ settlement and was made the administrative center of the Adler District. At that time the features of a resort zone began to take shape: boarding houses, holiday homes, the first sanatoriums. The Great Patriotic War spared Adler itself, but nearby, along the foothills, defensive lines ran; in 1942–1943 German mountain rifle units tried to break through over the passes. Hospitals operated on the coast — the buildings of sanatoriums functioned as rear medical bases.

In 1961, the territory of the Adler District was incorporated into the expanded city of Sochi — thus “Greater Sochi” emerged, stretching from Magri in the north to the Psou River in the south. Adler became an inner-city district, and later one of the four administrative districts of the city. Its role was defined by two factors: a transport hub and a southern resort zone.

The airport at Cape Adler began operating as early as the prewar years, but as a modern airport it took shape in the second half of the 20th century. Adler railway station became the terminus for most trains from the north. By the end of the 1980s, the city effectively functioned as the gateway to the entire Soviet Black Sea coast — from here routes diverged to Khosta, Matsesta, Sochi and onward to Gagra and Sukhumi.

After 1991, the Soviet resort system went through a severe crisis. The closure of union-level sanatoriums, the war in Abkhazia and the loss of former tourist flows hit the economy hard; in Adler, spontaneous mini-hotels, markets and private construction appeared. By the end of the 1990s the resort began to recover, but it had not yet reached its former scale.

The Olympics and the Sirius federal territory

The turning point came in 2007, when at the IOC session in Guatemala Sochi won the right to host the 2014 Winter Games. The main cluster of ice events and the Olympic Village were located precisely in Adler — on the Imereti Lowland, historically swampy and sparsely built up. Over six years, the Fisht Stadium, the Bolshoy Ice Dome, the Olympic Park, a bypass of Kurortny Prospekt, a new motor road and the Adler — Krasnaya Polyana railway, and the reconstructed airport rose here.

The XXII Winter Olympic Games took place from February 7 to 23, 2014, the Paralympic ones — in March. After the Games, some of the facilities remained operational: in 2018 Fisht hosted World Cup football matches, ice rinks, concert and exhibition venues operate on the sites of the former speed skating and hockey stadiums. Around the Imereti embankment, a dense resort and residential development took shape, which had not existed here before the Olympics.

In 2020, part of the Olympic cluster received a special status — the federal territory of Sirius was created, with its own administration and subordination directly to the federal center. The Sirius Educational Center, the Presidential Lyceum, Sirius University and a science and technology park operate on its territory. Formally, Sirius has been removed from the composition of Sochi, but visually it remains a continuation of the Imereti resort.

Today the history of Adler is composed of all these layers at once: the Paleolithic on the cliffs of the Akhshtyr Cave, the Genoese trading post on medieval maps, the 1837 fort beneath today’s streets, the resettlement villages of the 19th century, the Soviet resort and the Olympic architecture of the 21st century. The city has not become a museum of any of these eras — it works as the southern gateway of the coast, through which millions of people pass every season.