Although the vicinity is rich in prehistoric dolmens and contains ruins of about twenty medieval forts, the settlement first appears in recorded history in 1835, when a Russian spy, Baron Fyodor Tornau, visited the Sadz Abkhazian village of Artquaj in the guise of a Circassian mountaineer. Having spent several days in the village, he recorded his observations in a fascinating journal. Among other things, Tornau noted that the village was famous for its honey which was exported by the Sadz people to the Ottoman Empire.
Three decades later, this village, then known as Kbaada, populated with the Akhchipsou branch of the Sadz, was the site where four main Russian armies linked up, a collective prayer was held, and the end of the prolonged Caucasian War solemnly declared (on June 2, 1864). At the conclusion of the Russian-Circassian conflicts, the mountaineers were ethnically cleansed to the Ottoman Empire. Their abandoned aul was replaced with a Russian settlement of Krasnaya Polyana in 1869. The original colonists were ethnically diverse, including not only Russians, but also Greeks from Stavropol and Estonians, who colonized Estosadok, now a ski resort 4 kilometers (2.5 mi) upstream on the Mzymta.
On June 19, 1899, Krasnaya Polyana was visited by an official commission under Nikolay Abaza, with a view to transforming it into Tsarskaya Polyana, Nicholas II's hunting ground in the Western Caucasus. A royal hunting lodge was erected in 1901, followed by the chalets of Counts Sheremetev and Bobrinsky, among other nobles and high-placed dignitaries. Although it was never visited by the Tsar, the village was granted municipal rights and renamed Romanovsk, after the ruling imperial dynasty. A winding mountain road to Adler was inaugurated in 1898.
Following the October Revolution of 1917, the exclusive retreat reverted to its former name and status and gradually dwindled into obscurity. The proximity to Sochi, the "summer capital" of Russia, eventually
