Excavations of Chersonesos, carried out by Hermitage specialists, are being destroyed due to lack of conservation
The ruins of the ancient city of Chersonesos, excavated by the St. Petersburg Hermitage Museum in 2015, are deteriorating due to a lack of conservation. Anatoly Tumanov, a former employee of Chersonesos, wrote about this on his YouTube channel, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“This corner collapsed a year after the excavation, and this is a fresh collapse. I warned you - strengthen it, the wall stands on an earthen cushion. This is how we treat historical monuments,” says Tumanov.
To confirm his words, he posted a link to a video filmed in December 2017. Most of the walls there are still intact.
“It collapsed because it wasn’t secured. We left. All the land was taken away. And our people also say: well done Hermitage. And when the shore was washed away in winter, there was nothing to strengthen it. And ours don’t do anything,” says Tumanov.
Archaeologist Anatoly Tumanov was fired from the Chersonesos Museum after he wrote a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2017 about the barbaric attitude towards antiquities in Chersonesos. The new leadership encouraged screwing metal bolts into ancient stones, which destroy the masonry from the inside, sealing walls with foreign stones, and erecting permanent structures at excavations.
After Tumanov’s dismissal, multi-ton structures were erected right on the ruins to host the opera festival. Permission for this was given by the then director of Chersonesus, Svetlana Melnikova, who before working in Sevastopol headed the Vladimir-Suzdal Nature Reserve. Now she has returned to her previous place of work.
"Chersonese Tauride" was included in the UNESCO list in June 2013. The reserve is located in the center of Sevastopol and represents the ruins of an ancient Greek polis, on the site of which a Byzantine colony later existed (V century BC - XIV century AD). Regular excavations of the site began in 1827. Russian President Vladimir Putin called Chersonesos the “Russian Mecca” because, according to legend, Prince Vladimir was baptized here.