Named after the Ancient Greek port Odessos, which is believed to have been located in this area, Odessa was founded by Cathrine the Great, Empress of Russia in 1974, under who’s rule the Russian Empire grew larger and stronger by conquest and diplomacy. She also entroduced the smallpox vaccine for the common people and established the first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe (quite progressive wouldn’t you agree?). 

Duc de Richelieu designed and organized the city’s infrastructure and invited many well-known masters of architecture, engineering, urban planning and craftsmen from all over Europe to make this place a real gem of the Black Sea. A mixture of different architectural styles used like Art Nouveau, Classicism, Neo-Baroque, Rococo and Renaissance is the reason Odessa is nicknamed “Little Paris” and why the city feels so European. 

Even Mark Twain in his travelogue Innocents Abroad wrote about the duke: "Richelieu founded Odessa – watched over it with paternal care – labored with a fertile brain and a wise understanding for its best interests – spent his fortune freely to the same end – endowed it with a sound prosperity, and one which will yet make it one of the great cities of the Old World". 

The city was definitely a very multicultural one with many neighborhood names reflecting the predominant settlers’ ethnicities: Albanians, Armenians, Azeris, Bulgarians, Crimean Tatars, Frenchmen, Germans, Greeks, Italians, Jews, Poles, Romanians, Russians, Turks, Ukrainians, and traders from all around the world.  

Alexander Pushkin, one of the greatest Russian poets who spent his exile in Odessa between 1823 and 1824 (he was very naughty) wrote that Odessa was a city where "the air is filled with all Europe, French is spoken and there are European papers and magazines to read".

For those of you familiar with Soviet history would probably recognize Potemkin Steps from the movie “The Battleship Potemkin” which portrays the massacre that happened here in 1905 when the crew of the battleship rebelled against its officers. The British Film Institute (my favorite place in London), named it the 11th greatest film of all time in 2012. I haven’t seen the movie yet, I think it would be really hard to watch for me, as I really hate Bolsheviks, Communists and the rest responsible for the fall of the Russian Empire and the brutal killing of the Romanov family, including little children. Winter came to Russia more than a hundred years ago and Arya Stark was not there to save it.  

However, another woman, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the famous Soviet sniper nicknamed ‘Lady Death’ took part in the battle for Odessa trying to end the siege by Romanian Axis forces of the city that lasted for 3 months in 1941. She recorded 187 confirmed kills (including enemy snipers) during the defense of the “South Capital”. After brutal 73 days and tens of thousands dead on both sides, the Romanian troops eventually occupied the city. A 6 months massacre by Romanian occupiers took place right after with more than 25,000 Odessans murdered. The partisan movement has never stopped however and continued through out the whole occupation thanks to the Catacombs under the city, the longest urban labyrinth in the world, which acted as a hiding place and an underground transportation system. Odessa was awarded the title “Hero City” along with the other 3 cities: Stalingrad, Leningrad and Sevastopol after the victory over the Nazi forces in 1945.