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In 1787, Catherine made her Crimean Journey, a a six-month tour of her territories of Crimea and New Russia and Potemkin’s building projects.

- A decade earlier, Catherine had appointed Grigori Potemkin ruler over the New Russia. He encouraged colonization from surrounding nations by granting land subsidies and soon doubled the population. He oversaw spectacular building projects. He built Kherson as a base for the Black Sea Fleet, the city of Sevastopol, Simferopol, Dnipro, and modernized Odessa.

- Catherine’s journey began with a spectacular 750-mile sledding venture from Tsarskoe Selo (a little south of St. Petersburg) to Kiev (in northern Ukraine on the Dnieper River). “On New Years Day 1787, Catherine received the diplomatic corps at the Winter Palace, and then drove to Tsarskoe Selo. At eleven in the morning on January 7, in brilliant sunshine and bitter cold, she left Tsarskoe Selo in the first of fourteen large, comfortable carriages mounted on broad runners to convert them into sledges. Catherine’s carriage had seats for six, and she began the journey riding with her current favorite, Alexander Mamonov, Lev Naryshkin, Ivan Shuvalov, and a lady-in-waiting. All were wrapped in soft furs, with bearskins draped over their laps. Behind her, other carriage-sledges carried the foreign ambassadors, members of the court, government officials, and her personal staff. ... One hundred twenty-four smaller sleighs and sledges followed, carrying doctors, apothecaries, musicians, cooks, engineers, hairdressers, silver polishers, washerwomen, and scores of other male and female servants. ... In those northern latitudes at this time of year, daylight lasts no more than six hours, but this did not hinder Catherine’s progress. When darkness fell in the afternoon--as early as three o’clock on the first days of the journey--the road was illuminated by bonfires and blazing torches” (Massie, Catherine the Great).

- From Kiev, Catherine and her entourage traveled by the Dnieper River to the new naval base at Kherson. “Catherine and her guests remained in Kiev for six weeks. Thereafter, the journey was to be resumed in large galleys built for the voyage down the river. On April 22, cannon signaled that the ice on the river had cracked. At noon, the empress and her guests boarded seven opulently decorated and furnished Roman-style galleys, all painted in red and gold, with the Russian imperial double eagle emblazoned on their sides. Catherine’s galley, named Dnieper, had a bedroom hung with gold and scarlet silk brocade, a drawing room, a library, a music room, and a dining room. A private canopied deck offered her the opportunity to take the air while avoiding the sun. The six galleys following hers were almost as luxurious: also painted red and gold with interiors lined with expensive brocades. ... the seven large galleys followed by eighty smaller vessels carrying three thousand people who serviced this unusual flotilla” (Massie).

- In a mere nine years, Potemkin had transformed Kherson into a fortified city and naval base. “Nine years before, when Potemkin had first chosen this site twenty miles up the estuary from the Black Sea, Kherson had been no more than a few huts in a marsh. Now it was a fortified city with two thousand white houses, straight streets, shade trees, flower gardens, churches and public buildings, barracks for twenty thousand men, crowds in the streets, shops filled with goods, and a thriving shipyard with warehouses along the quays and two completed ships of the line and a frigate ready to be launched. More than a hundred ships, many of them Russian, were riding at anchor in the port. On May 15, Catherine and Joseph [Emperor of Austria] launched the three warships, including the ship of the line Vladimir and a powerful eighty-gun ship of the line diplomatically named St. Joseph” (Massie, Catherine the Great).

- Next Catherine and her entourage toured the Crimea which is a peninsula south of the Ukraine connected to the mainland by the Perekop Isthmus. They traveled 250 miles south of Kherson to the new city of Sebastopol on the Black Sea. “On May 22, they drove across the mountains through forests of cypress and pine to the rugged headlands of the Crimea’s Black Sea south coast. Here they entered a lush, Riviera-like region of mild temperatures the year around, with olive trees, orchards, vineyards, pastures, and gardens of jasmine, laurel, lilacs, wisteria, roses, and violets. Every spring, the sudden, massive flowering of fruit trees, shrubs, vines, and wildflowers, with their swirl of colors and odors, transformed the coast into a vast perfumed garden. Their destination was Inkerman, on the heights overlooking the Black Sea, where they dined in a new pavilion. After a midday banquet, Potemkin stood and drew back the curtains at one end of the room. Before them, under the cloudless blue Crimean sky, the travelers saw an amphitheater of rugged mountain peaks rising from emerald blue waters. This was the great bay of Sebastopol, glittering in the sunlight. In the bay lay the ships of Potemkin’s growing Black Sea Fleet. On a signal from the pavilion, the ships thundered a salute to the two monarchs” (Massie).

- At the end of the Crimea tour, Potemkin staged a massive re-creation of the 1709 Battle of Poltava where Peter the Great defeated Sweden. Fifty-thousand Russian soldiers, some costumed as Swedes, participated in the reenactment.

- It was later alleged by a critical German biographer that Potemkin deceived Catherine with the hasty construction of fake buildings, which is the origin of the term “Potemkin village.” But this was refuted by men who were on the journey. The Prince of Ligne, a member of the Austrian delegation who did his own exploration on the journey, pronounced the allegations false (Simon Montefiore, Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin).