Experience the best of Odessa

Odesa stands on the northern shore of the Black Sea in southern Ukraine and was founded in 1794 under Catherine the Great on the site of an Ottoman fortress. Its wide streets, laid out in a grid, are lined with nineteenth-century buildings in neoclassical and Art Nouveau styles, and Primorsky Boulevard runs along the clifftop above the port. The Potemkin Stairs, a monumental stairway of 192 steps, leads down to the harbour and appears in Eisenstein's 1925 film.

The Opera and Ballet Theatre, designed by Viennese architects in 1887, is an ornate building in the city centre. Deribasivska Street is a pedestrian street of cafés, the Passage is a grand covered shopping arcade, and the Privoz market is a large, noisy bazaar of fish, fruit and spices. Beneath the city, a network of limestone catacombs runs for kilometres, and the sandy beaches of Arkadia lie along the coast.

Odesa's table mixes Ukrainian, Jewish, Greek and Black Sea traditions: fish from the sea, stuffed carp, forshmak, a chopped herring spread, and sweet pastries. The city has a tradition of humour and street songs. The beaches fill in summer, and winter brings a cold wind off the sea.