Bakhchysarai lies in a narrow valley of the Çürük Suv [uk] river, about 30 Kilometers south-west of Simferopol.

Before the founding of Bakhchysarai the Qırq Yer fortress (modern Çufut Qale), Salaçıq, and Eski Yurt were built.

Following the annexation of the Crimean Khanate by the Russian Empire in 1783, Bakhchysarai became an ordinary town, having lost administrative significance.

However, it remained a cultural center of the Crimean Tatars for several decades afterward, fostered by Ismail Gaspirali (1851-1914) who founded the local newspaper Tercüman in 1883.

During the Crimean War of 1853–56, Bakhchysarai essentially became a hospital town as wounded Russian soldiers from the battlefield were brought in to be treated.

Adam Mickiewicz devoted some of the finest poems in his Polish-language Crimean Sonnets (1825) to the landmarks of Bakhchysarai (Polish: Bakczysaraj).

The ethnic groups represented were 7,420 Crimean Tatars, 1,850 Russians, 315 Jews, 205 Greeks, 185 Ukrainians, 50 Germans, 30 Armenians, 30 Bulgarians, and 365 others.

Russians make up the majority of the population, while ethnic Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars form significant minorities.