The Historical Centre of the Odessa Ploshchad Potemkintsev-Pereulok Mendeleyeva-Ulitsa Gogolya-Pereulok Nekrasova- Preobrazhenskaya street -Pereulok Mayakovskogo-Ulitsa Lastochkina-Ulitsa Khalturina- Ulitsa Catherine -Ploshchad Potemkintsev Time: from one to one and a half hours, this does not include visits to the museums. This route takes us around a smaller circle which is within the larger circle of the first…
Ulitsa Krasnoy Gvardii is also the site of another exhibition hall, that of the Ukrainian Artists’ Union (No. 2), which has no permanent collection but organises exhibitions of local artists and artists from other parts of the Soviet Union and other countries. Apart from the exhibition hall there are also studios for the artists on…
The Museum of Fine Arts is on this street (No. 5a). The building used to be the palace of Count S. Pototski and was built by an unknown architect between 1805 and 1810 in the style of early Russian classicism. The main section is two-storey high with a six-column Corinthian portico with a moulded frieze…
The Gorky Science Library (13 Ulitsa Pastera). Built in 1906 by architect F. Nesturkh it is regarded-as the best library premises built in Russia at the turn of the century. The central part is occupied by the reading rooms, while the left wing and basement house the books, and the right wing the offices. The…
The Ukrainian Musical and Drama Theatre founded in 1925. Performances are in Ukrainian and the theatre carries on the best traditions of the Ukrainian stage.
But to return to Ulitsa Sadovaya. The most prominent building is that of the Telephone and Telegraph Offices (Dom Svyazi) (No. 10) built in 1902-1903 by the St. Petersburg architect Vladimir Kharlamov. Wishing to create a monumental building, he overdid the decorations of the facade with too many arches, and heavy cornices and loggias, but…
Water in Odessa was always a thorny problem. The water was first taken from wells or brought by barges from Kherson, while special underground cisterns accumulated rainwater from the roofs. This is why some of the older houses have roofs with one sharp incline towards the courtyard where the rain would drop into special collectors.…
Deribasovskaya with its numerous shops is one of the main shopping centres of Odessa. There is the Ukrainian Souvenir shop, Sputnik (watches and cameras), Dom Knigi and Medkniga (two big bookshops, the second specialising in medical literature); there are also numerous cafes, kiosks, and stalls. Like elsewhere in the city, on Deribasovskaya, there are automatic…
The square holds the Regional Scroll of Honour, winners of the socialist emulation. Also on white marble are inscribed the names of Heroes of the Soviet Union and Heroes of Socialist Labour born in Odessa and its region. Ulitsa Lenina, one of the main thoroughfares of Odessa, starts at the Opera theatre. The building on…
The Odessa Opera and Ballet Theatre is the first house on Ulitsa Lenina (Lenin Street). The theatre and the town of Odessa were born simultaneously. Performances were given on strips of wasteland, at the market places and in barns, with visiting companies coming from as far as Italy and France. By 1803 local opera-lovers had…
The building on the right-hand side with two huge ancient anchors at the entrance is the UKRAINE Naval Museum. Designed and built in 1842 by G.Toriccelli in a strictly classical style, it was originally the English Club. It, too, stands on a sharp incline, so its facade which overlooks the Opera and Ballet Theatre has…
The Odessa State Literary Museum, it was built in 1842 in the style of Russian classicism by the architect Ludwig Otton and used to be the residence of Count Gagarin. The Museum describes the Southern (and Odessa) period in the life of more than two hundred writers, among them a number of foreign writers. Pushkin’s…
The Archeological Museum of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. It was founded in 1825 and was the first museum in Odessa. Initially the building built by the architect G.Toriccelli in the 1830’s housed the Museum of the Society of History and Antiquity. Soon, however, the museum proved too small to hold the collection and in…
The dominating building on the square is house No. 1. It now houses the Odessa City Council of People’s Deputies. and flies the flag of the Ukraine. The building is both an architectural and historical monument. It was constructed in 1829-1834, and designed by F. Boffo in the style of Russian classicism. In 1871-1873 the…
The monument to Alexander Pushkin. In 1820 he was exiled to the south of Russia for his freedom-loving verses, first to Kishinev, then to Odessa, where he spent 13 months from July 3rd, 1823 to August 1st, 1824. He was posted as archivist to the office of the Governor-General Mikhail Vorontsov. Their relations were far…
The Hotel Odessa which can accommodate a hundred and fifty visitors. Built in 1893, its architect Yuri Dmitrenko took pains to make it blend with the general ensemble of the boulevard. The entrance takes the form of an open loggia. The facade is in the style of the early Renaissance, with three vertical projections and…
The famous Potemkin stairs leading from the square to the sea and Ulitsa Suvorova (Suvorov St.) was designed in 1825 by F. Boffo. The actual construction lasted from 1837 to 1841. Initially the steps were built out of a greenish-grey sandstone brought especially for that purpose from Trieste, but as the years passed erosion took…
The building on the left side was built in 1829-1830, and could be regarded as a mirror image of the one on the right, with only a few minor differences, but its classical style was changed considerably during the second half of the 19th century when it was adapted as a hotel and balconies were…
That is why the square at the beginning of the Primorsky Bulvar, open to the sea and the skies, was chosen as the site for the bronze bust sculpted by A. Kovalev of Valentin Glushko, the father of Soviet rocket engines, twice Hero of Socialist Labour. Chestnut and linden trees line the boulevard. Most of…
The Palace was built in 1826 to 1827 by the architect F. Boffo in the style of Russian classicism. It used to be the official residence o Count M. Vorontsov, the Governor-General of the Novorossiisk Area, of which Odessa was then the centre, and which included the steppe-regions of the Ukraine, the Crimea, Bessarabia and…
1. Malinovsky Monument 2. Glushko Monument 3. Pushkin Monument 4. Vakulenchuk Monument 5. Vorontsov Monument 6. Richelieu Monument 7. Monument to the heroes of the uprising on the battleship Potemkin 8. Sea Terminal 9. Crimean War (1853-1856) Memorial-A Cannon 10. Fine Arts Museum 11. Museum of History and Regional Studies 12. History Department of the…
Odessa is one of the many Ukraine cities that belong to the World Federation of Twin Towns. It maintains friendly ties with thirteen towns in different parts of the world-most of them being coastal like itself. They are Varna in Bulgaria, Segled in Hungary, Constanta in Romania, Split in Yugoslavia, Marseille in France, Yokohama in…
Odessa is the centre of a big health resort area, stretching from the lower reaches of the Dniester River to the mouth of the Danube. Along the Black Sea coast there are curative facilities of all types, mud-treatment, balneologic and climatologic. The treatment is based on the mud of the limans and the beneficial properties…
The cultural life of Odessa is rich and varied. There is something to please everyone in the world of arts. There are six museums and the Exhibition Hall of the Ukrainian Artists’ Union, six theatres, a Philharmonic Society, a circus, a Sports palace, which is often also used as a concert hall, 55 workers’ clubs…
Odessa as a Science. The scientists of Odessa are making a notable contribution to many fields of science, technology and medicine, including plant selection and genetics, the biology of the southern seas and microbiology, chemistry, physics, astronomy and the social science. Thanks to its highly-qualified science personnel, Odessa has become a major science centre of…
Odessa has a well-developed industry. Its branches include the engineering and machine tool, metal-working, road and transport machinery, chemical, radio, light and food industry. Odessa is also an important ship-repair centre of the Black Sea area. The city occupies a notable place in the national economic complex. It produces metal-cutting machine tools, forge and press…
The Port of Odessa always held an important place in domestic trade and is even more important in international trade. Half the passenger traffic and about thirty percent of the cargo traffic of the country passes through the Port of Odessa. The port is a first class highly-mechanised transport junction and is the base of…
As soon as the enemy had been ousted from Odessa, the city got down to healing the wounds of war. The state allocated very large sums for the restoration of the town, and all the Soviet republics helped by sending building materials, machines and equipment, as well as specialists and workers. Between 1946 and 1950…
Then came March, 1944, when Soviet forces were moving indomitably to the West. After the defeat at Stalingrad and then on the Kursk Salient, the German troops were rolling back. They still made attempts to launch the odd counter-offensive, but the days of Hitler’s fascism were nearly over. The job of liberating Odessa fell to…
The fascist armies entered the city left by the Soviet forces towards the evening of October 16th and the dark days of occupation began. Right from the start the occupation authorities issued orders depriving the local population of all civil rights. They were forbidden to leave their homes without special passes, a night curfew was…
The Great Patriotic War (the Heroic Defence of Odessa, the Partisan Movement, the Liberation of the City) On June 22nd, 1941, nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in violation of the 1939 non-aggression Pact. By that time German imperialism had at its service practically the entire economic potential of conquered Europe, and it was out…
Almost three years of battle and repeated occupation had brought Odessa to the brink of economic disaster. Most of the factories and the port were at a standstill and 95% of the merchant fleet had either been sunk by the invaders or taken away. Through immense effort and selfless work, the workers gradually brought back…
From the Founding of the City and up to the Revolution (1794-1917) Odessa is comparatively young and was founded at the end of the 18th century, but the history of the north-west coast of the Black Sea on which the city is situated goes much further back. In the 1st millennium B.C. and the beginning…
The city of Odessa lies on the Black Sea coast in the Bay of Odessa, at the point where the sea and steppe meet. It has a population of over one million – Ukrainians, Moldavians, Bulgarians, Jews, Belorussians and others-more than forty nationalities in all. The city occupies a territory of 160 square kilometers. Odessa…