On the basis of archival documents the article reconstructs the history of the academic expedition taken place in 1821 to the Novorossiya Province (from Odessa to the Taman Peninsula) under the direction of academician E.E. Köhler (1765–1838). The French architect E. Pascal (1791– 1861) also took part in this expedition. The travelers should make plans of ruins, copies of the ancient inscriptions, take measures for the protection of monuments, report on all the excavations and purchase antiquities for the Kunstkammer. The detailed information about the course of the expedition is given in the unpublished Köhler’s travel diary (the Department of the Manuscripts of the Russian National Library) and in the documents on the organization, the conducting and the results of the expedition (the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the RAS, the Russian State Historical Archive), which are being prepared for the publication in the Russian translation.