The article examines the issue of the new imperial title of Catherine II. Less than a year had passed since the annexation of Crimea to Russia on April 8, 1783, when, on February 2, 1784, a new form of the empress’s full title was adopted, in which the words “Tsarina of the Tauric Chersonesus” appeared, along with a decree to the Senate on the establishment of the Tauride region. Closing the row of previously annexed Horde khanates, now the kingdoms of Kazan, Astrakhan, and Siberia, the Crimean Khanate was designated under the name of the kingdom of Tauric Chersonesos, referring to the ancient and Byzantine heritage and responding to the ideas of the “Greek project.” Given the paucity of knowledge about Crimea and even about the localization of Chersonesos–Kherson–Korsun, as the place of the baptism of Rus’, the question arises regarding the source of both the formula itself and the increasingly frequent naming of the peninsula with the definitions “Tauride” and “Taurida.” It seems that the answer to these and other questions can be found in the scientific and literary heritage of the Roman Catholic Archbishop Stanisław Bohusz‑Siestrzeńcewicz (1731–1826), which is dedicated to Crimea, and in his contacts with G.A. Potemkin and Catherine II. Particular attention is given to his works “The History of the Kingdom of Tauric Chersonesos” (“The History of Taurida”) and the tragedy “Gikia in Taurida”, based on the work of Constantine Porphyrogenitus.
Catherine II; “Greek project”; localization of Kherson-Korsun; Tauric Chersonesus; Stanisław Bohusz‑Siestrzeńcewicz; tragedy “Gikia in Taurida”; Constantine Porphyrogenitus; Taurian goddess in numismatics and epigraphy; queen – basilissa of Chersonesos.