Odessa is Ukraine's largest port city, founded by Catherine the Great in 1794 on the site of a captured Ottoman fortress and built by the French emigre Duke de Richelieu (the great-nephew of Cardinal Richelieu) into one of the most beautiful neoclassical cities of the Russian Empire in just three decades. The Potemkin Stairs (192 steps, built 1837–1841, immortalised in Eisenstein's 1925 film Battleship Potemkin), the colonnaded buildings of Primorsky Boulevard and the faded elegance of the city centre reflect a 19th-century cosmopolitan port where Greek, Jewish, Italian, Moldovan and Ukrainian merchants coexisted in extraordinary cultural and commercial richness. Odessa was historically the most Jewish city in the Russian Empire (35% Jewish population by 1900), the birthplace of the Zionist movement's practical founder Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and the home of writers Isaac Babel (Odessa Tales) and Ilya Ilf. The city's catacombs (a 2,500 km network of limestone tunnels beneath the city, mined for building material in the 18th–19th centuries) served as partisan hiding places during the Nazi occupation — 73 partisans lived underground for 907 days. Since February 2022 Odessa has been under Russian missile attack (the port and grain infrastructure have been repeatedly targeted) and significant damage has been done to heritage buildings; travel advisories vary and the situation is actively evolving. Despite wartime conditions, the city's food, culture and architectural heritage remain extraordinary — the Privoz Market, Derybasivska Street, the opera house and the catacombs are all open when security permits.
The 192 steps (built 1837–1841) rising from the port to Primorsky Boulevard are an optical illusion — designed so from the top only the landings are visible and from the bottom only the steps; Eisenstein used them for the pram scene in Battleship Potemkin (1925); the bronze Duc de Richelieu at the top founded the city.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe elevated boulevard (completed 1842) of neoclassical palace facades was described by Mark Twain as one of the most beautiful streets in Europe — the Pushkin monument (Pushkin was exiled to Odessa 1823–1824) and the former Vorontsov Palace (now the City Hall) line the sea-facing promenade.
The enormous Privoz Market (functioning since 1827) is one of Ukraine's great food markets — smoked Black Sea fish, Ukrainian salo (cured pork fat), pickled vegetables, Odessa-style forshmak (chopped herring and apple salad), fresh produce from Bessarabia and the market banter that Isaac Babel immortalised in his Odessa Tales.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe 1887 opera house (rebuilt after fire, designed by Viennese architects Fellner and Helmer in Baroque-Rococo style) is one of the most beautiful opera houses in Europe — the interior with its ceiling fresco, horseshoe auditorium and gilt decorations is comparable to Vienna's Staatsoper; performances available when security permits.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideOdessa's pedestrian main street with its cafés, restaurants and the City Garden has a specifically Odessan cultural identity — the city is famous in the Russian-speaking world for its distinctive ironic humour; the Odessa humour festival (April) celebrates this tradition; evening Georgian wines and Ukrainian varenyky at the street restaurants.
The 2,500 km network of limestone tunnels under Odessa (the largest catacombs in the world by length, longer than Paris) were mined for the limestone that built the city; during WWII 73 Soviet partisans lived underground for 907 days fighting the Romanian occupation — the Nerubayske Partisan Museum documents their resistance.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideOdessa was 35% Jewish by 1900 and birthplace of Ze'ev Jabotinsky (Zionist leader), violinist Jascha Heifetz and writer Isaac Babel — the Brodsky Synagogue (1863), the remains of the Jewish quarter and the memorial to Jews murdered in WWII pogroms tell a complex story of the most cosmopolitan Jewish community in the Russian Empire.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe working-class Jewish quarter where Isaac Babel was born and where his gangster Benya Krik stories are set still has the crooked lanes and courtyard housing of the Odessa Tales — the mixture of Romanian, Jewish, Ukrainian and Soviet-era architecture tells the story of a quarter that survived pogroms, revolution and two world wars.
Black Sea cuisine: fried or grilled kalkan (turbot), bychky (Black Sea gobies in tomato sauce, the definitive Odessa cheap food), forshmak herring salad and Bessarabian wine — the port area restaurants serve the freshest catches with the sea view that shaped Odessa's entire identity.
Odessa has 25 km of Black Sea beaches accessible by tram from the city centre — Lanzheron (closest to centre, municipal) and Arcadia (the main resort beach, 7 km south) have warm Black Sea water (22–25°C in summer); the Black Sea is notably less salty than the ocean (17‰ vs 35‰), making it comfortable for long swims.
The Odessa Fine Art Museum in a neoclassical mansion holds one of the finest collections of 19th–20th century Ukrainian and Russian painting outside Kyiv — Aivazovsky sea paintings, Repin portraits and a strong avant-garde section reflecting Odessa's role as a port open to European modernism.
The former Vorontsov Palace (Count Mikhail Vorontsov was the imperial governor who built much of 19th-century Odessa) has a roofless colonnade shelter overlooking the sea — the loggia with its Corinthian columns and the view of the port (the origin of Odessa's wealth) frames the city's most romantic ruin.
The London Hotel (Londons'ka, est. 1827, the oldest hotel in Ukraine still operating) has a terrace where Pushkin, Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Mark Twain all sat — a farewell Armenian cognac or Ukrainian vodka at one of the historic bars on Primorsky Boulevard with the Potemkin Stairs below.