In 1828, Count Mikhail Vorontsov, the governor-general of the Novorossiysk region, acquired fertile lands on the picturesque shores of the Black Sea near Yalta. He planned to build a summer residence and engage in winemaking. The palace project was entrusted to British architect Edward Blore. Although the architect never visited the construction site, he created a design that accurately considered the features of the terrain and landscape near Alupka and Yalta.

The main workforce for the palace construction consisted of serfs from the Vladimir and Moscow provinces. Only the best craftsmen were involved: stonemasons, carvers, and finishers. Vorontsov even managed to attract a separate sapper battalion. Most of the work was done manually, and construction progressed slowly: the house was completed only after 20 years, in 1848. At that time, sculptures of lions, created in the workshop of Italian sculptor Giovanni Bonanni, were installed at the central entrance. A park was laid out around the palace, and a fountain was installed. A feature of the park was the Swan Lake, whose bottom was filled with semi-precious stones to make it shine on clear days.

The palace consisted of five buildings, including more than a hundred bedrooms, living rooms, and halls, as well as a billiard room. This splendor belonged to three generations of the Vorontsov family. After the October Revolution, the palace was nationalized, but the architectural ensemble was preserved and turned into a museum.

The palace suffered greatly during the Great Patriotic War, when the occupiers took away everything valuable from it. The Vorontsov residence entered world history because, in January 1945, during the Yalta Conference, it housed the English delegation led by Churchill.