How much do we know about Odessa? Great poets worked here, favorite films of the Soviet times were born at the Odessa film studio, and Misha Japonchyk became the famous Robin Hood from Odessa. But this is not the whole history of the city.
We have prepared interesting facts related to Odessa, which may open the city for you from the other side.
In the tower of the house №5 on Preobrazhenskaya Street there is a creative Odessa lighthouse, which works “in pairs” with Vorontsovsky and helps ships that enter the port. If the ship is on the right course, it is possible to observe both beacons on the course line at the same time, visually one above the other. Due to the difference in height of the signs, you can determine exactly in which direction to adjust the course. The height of this lighthouse above sea level is 54.9 meters.
In Odessa, there is a street named after the sister city – Genoa. And in Genoa, Italy, in turn, there is a street in Odessa – Via Odessa.
Genoa is also on the index of sister cities near Duma Square: it is 1706 kilometers.
From 1845, the Italian Franz Morandi was the chief architect of Odessa: he created a synagogue on the corner of Richelieu and Jewish, developed a master plan of the city, expanded Alexander Avenue and supervised the construction and decoration of the Roman Catholic Cathedral on Catherine.
In addition, he owns many houses on Kanatnaya, Troitskaya, Richelevskaya, Primorsky Boulevard, Polskaya Street, Katerynynska Square, Marazliyivska, Pushkinskaya, Lanzheronovskaya, Uspenskaya, and others.
The Odessa Archaeological Museum houses a gold coin of Prince Vladimir – the first gold coin of Kievan Rus.
There are only 11 of them in the world:
- In the Hermitage – 7
- In the Russian State Historical Museum – 1
- In the National Museum of History of Ukraine – 1
- The location of another is unknown.
One of Freud’s most famous patients, the Wolf Man, lived in Odessa.
Sergei Pankeev was a regular and one of Freud’s favorite patients. It was about him that Sigmund wrote the book “On the History of a Child’s Neurosis”, which became a table book for psychoanalysts around the world.
Few people know that it was in Odessa that the longest balcony in Europe was built, which completely frames the building without interruption. To see it, you need to pay attention to the corner house, located on the corner of Gretska and Katerynynska streets. This is the so-called apartment house Mavrokordato, built in 1905 by architect Yuri Dmitrenko.