Sights in Odesa
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Arkadia beach
Lots of people do swim at Odesa's crowded, dirty beaches in summer, but that's not really what beach life here is about. With its English, Victorian-style sideshows and lines of cafes, bars and clubs, the most popular beach, Arkadia, is for hanging out - seeing and being seen. As you travel down the boulevard, enjoy the views of the old sanatoriums.
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Pushkin Museum
The Pushkin Museum is where Alexander Pushkin spent his first days in Odesa, after being exiled from Moscow by the tsar in 1823 for radical ideas. Governor Vorontsov subsequently humiliated the writer with petty administrative jobs, and it took only 13 months, an affair with Vorontsov’s wife, a simultaneous affair with someone else’s wife and more radical ideas for Pushkin to be thrown out of Odesa too. Somehow, he still found time while in town to finish the poem ‘The Bakhchysaray Fountain’, write the first chapter of Eugene Onegin and scribble the notes and moaning letters found in this humble museum.
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Vul Gogolya
While building buffs are liable to find unheralded architectural gems along any street in the centre, the mother lode is on vul Gogolya, where the city's best 19th-century architects were apparently in a contest to create the city's most elaborate buildings. With its odd patterns, bright colours and eccentric balconies, No 14 is probably the most eye-catching, followed by No 6, where a row of gods supports the 2nd-floor balcony.
The street's namesake, Nikolai Gogol, lived at No 11 for several months in the 1850s - just one of several prominent names to have had an address here.
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Panteleymonivsky Church
You can't help but spy the five silver onion domes of the Russian Orthodox Panteleymonivsky Church, built by Greek monks with stones from Constantinople in the late 19th century. According to legend, every time the Soviets painted over the church’s elaborate frescoes, the frescoes would miraculously reappear. While the Soviets eventually succeeded in covering them up, many of the frescoes are once again visible thanks to vigorous restoration efforts.
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Statue of the Duc de Richelieu
On bul Prymorsky, you'll find the statue of the Duc de Richelieu, Odesa's first governor, looking like a Roman in a toga, at the top of the Potemkin Steps. The view from here is of the passenger port, the towering Hotel Odessa and the Black Sea. The view, however, is probably better from the bottom of the steps, where the designers' optical illusion takes effect: the stairs seem higher than they are, thanks to a gradual narrowing from bottom (21m wide) to top (13m wide).
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City Garden
Odesa's main commercial street, pedestrian vul Derybasivska, is jam-packed with restaurants, bars and, in the summer high season, tourists. At the western end of the street is the pleasant, recently reconstructed City Garden, surrounded by several restaurants. You'll find various touristy knick-knacks for sale here and you can get your photo taken with a monkey or a snake, but the main draw is people-watching.
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Potemkin Steps
The Potemkin Steps are the site of one of cinema's most famous scenes - in the Battleship Potemkin. They're in the renovated, most beautiful part of town; the Prymorsky bulvar, a pedestrian zone with replica antique lamps. At the eastern end, you'll pass the pink and white colonnaded Odesa City Hall, originally the stock exchange and later the Soviet HQ.
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Museum of Western and Eastern Art
The Museum of Western and Eastern Art has one of three known versions (most likely not the original) of Caravaggio’s brilliant painting The Taking of Christ. Housed in a beautiful, if run-down, mid-19th-century palace, the museum’s collection also includes canvases by Canaletto, Rubens and Hals.
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Opera and Ballet Theatre
One block north of vul Derybasivska, on vul Lanzheronivska, sits the city's architectural jewel, the Opera and Ballet Theatre, designed in the 1880s by the architects who also designed the famous Vienna State Opera, namely Ferdinand Fellner and Herman Helmer. You can take a tour of the theatre or, better yet, take in a performance.
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Vorontsov Palace
At the western end of bul Prymorsky, back up the stairs and to the right, is the derelict Vorontsov Palace. This was the residence of the city's third governor, built in 1826 in a classical style with interior Arabic detailing. The Greek-style colonnade behind the palace offers brilliant views over Odesa's bustling port.
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Odessa Fine Arts Museum
The Odessa Fine Arts Museum, located in the former palace of one Count Pototsky, has an impressive collection of Russian and Ukrainian art, including a few seascapes by master talent Aivazovksy and some Soviet realist paintings.
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Bul Prymorsky
The steps are in the renovated, most beautiful part of town and descend from the tree-lined bul Prymorsky, a pedestrian zone to which the whole city gravitates, with replica 19th-century gas lamps.
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Preobrazhensky Cathedral
Pl Soborna is the site of the gigantic, newly rebuilt Preobrazhensky Cathedral, which was Odesa's most famous and important church until Stalin had it blown up in the 1930s.
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Literature Museum
The Literature Museum is an old palace. The collection here will mostly interest Russian literature fanatics since nothing is in English.
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Archaeology Museum
Gold jewellery and coins from early Black Sea civilisations (as well as a few Egyptian mummies) are showcased at the Archaeology Museum.
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Oceanarium
The Oceanarium has entertaining dolphin shows. It is located in the Shevchenko Park
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Shevchenko Park
Shevchenko Park has a few interesting monuments, a soccer stadium and an Oceanarium
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