Pontus or Pontos is a region on the southern coast of the Black Sea, located in the modern-day eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey. The name was applied to the coastal region and its mountainous hinterland by the Greeks who colonized the area in the Archaic period and derived from the Greek name of the Black Sea: Εύξεινος Πόντος (Eúxinos Póntos), "Hospitable Sea", or simply Pontos as early as the Aeschylean Persians and Herodotus' Histories.
Traditional rural Pontic house.
Sumela Monastery in Pontic Mountains
Christian population in 1896
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. The Black Sea is supplied by major rivers, principally the Danube, Dnieper and Dniester. Consequently, while six countries have a coastline on the sea, its drainage basin includes parts of 24 countries in Europe.
The estuary of the Veleka in the Black Sea. Longshore drift has deposited sediment along the shoreline which has led to the formation of a spit (Sinemorets, Bulgaria).
Black Sea coast of western Georgia, with the skyline of Batumi on the horizon
Swallow's Nest in Crimea
Coastline of Samsun in Turkey