Just below the rim of the Mangup summit, there is a spring of chill, delicious water. Then the trees part and you emerge into a tableland of flat, sort turf scented with thyme. Ruins stand about, some with towers and arches, others little more than the stone wall-footings which are all that remains of basilicas and gatehouses and synagogues and watch-towers. The world, sea and land, lies spread out below. People came and settled on Mangup when they were afraid or wanted to be alone with God, or both.

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The only inhabitants of Mangup are a colony of Russian hippies, out where the plateau juts to the north-east in terrifying bowsprit of bare stone overhanging a thousand feet of air. The hippies live in old guard-houses cut into the rock, rolled in blankets on the stone floors, breathing a fog of dope and smoke from fires of green sticks.

Neal Ascherson, Washington Post
1995