Attractions of Odesa

Odesa Port Museum named after Frants de Volan was founded in 1990 on the initiative of the port worker and collector Mykola Hlib-Koshansky, and was opened for the 200th anniversary of Odesa.

The museum is located in the ancient building of the barge - a night house for port loaders.

The exhibition is based on a unique collection of documents dedicated to the history of the construction and development of the Odesa seaport, founded in 1796 according to the plans of the Dutch engineer Frants de Volan. In particular, de Voland's plans for the development of the city and the harbor are presented.

There is also an exhibition of the naval museum, which was previously located in the building of the Odesa Sea Station. The pride of the museum is several hundred ship models.

Excursions are conducted with a visit to the museum and the port.

The Museum of the History of the Odesa Railway was founded in 1985.

During the existence of the museum, a large number of exhibits have been collected, reflecting the most important events in the history of the formation and development of the railway. These are old archival documents, maps, photographs, various awards, railway equipment, uniforms of past years, flags, models of rolling stock, etc. The museum's exposition reveals all stages of the construction and development of Odesa's railway transport, the labor traditions of many generations of railway workers.

More than 1,200 exhibits are presented to the attention of museum visitors.

The Museum of the Main Office of the National Police of Odesa Region was opened in Odesa in 1980 on the initiative of journalist and investigator Vasyl Davydenko, who during 40 years of service in the internal affairs bodies collected various thematic exhibits. In 1992, the museum received the title of "People's Museum".

The first exposition was presented with weapons of different years, uniforms of law enforcement officers of all ranks, documents of classified cases, as well as an exhibition of the development of the Odesa police in chronological order.

Currently, the museum's funds consist of over 40 thousand exhibits, 7 of which are presented for viewing in 6 halls of the museum. The exposition is divided into several thematic sections. Among the most interesting exhibits are the weapons of the tsarist police, manufactured back in 1848. One of the central stands of the museum is dedicated to the famous Odesa pickpockets and con artists, who, with the help of knowledge of psychology, sleight of hand, and simple card tricks, managed to leave their victims penniless.

Odesa Regional Academic Drama Theater, the oldest theater in the south of Ukraine, was built in 1875 by the merchant Velikanov, and was intended for the performances of the drama troupe beloved by Odesa residents by the famous provincial actor and entrepreneur Mykola Myloslavskyi.

Initially, the theater was named after the owner "Velikanov Theater", but in 1875 Velikanov sold the theater to Feliks Rafalovych, who called it the Russian Theater. Before the Bolshevik coup of 1917, the Russian theater served as the venue for the city's biggest theatrical events. Stars of the world stage played here: Sara Bernard, Volodymyr Davydov, Mariya Zankovetska, Panas Saksahanskyi, Mark Kropyvnytskyi and others. During the years of Soviet power, the state Odesa Russian Drama Theater was finally registered in this building.

In 2003, it opened after almost two years of reconstruction. Having preserved several of the best performances created earlier, the theater has performed a number of new high-profile productions.

On March 2, 2022, in connection with Russia's large-scale military invasion of Ukraine, the theater team made a decision to rename the theater - the word "Russian" was removed from its name.

The Odesa Regional Philharmonic is located in a massive gray building built in 1899 according to a sketch project by the Viennese architect Vikentiy Prohaska, redesigned by the outstanding Italian architect Oleksandr Bernardatstsi in the style of Italian Gothic with elements of the Renaissance.

It was originally built as the New Merchant Exchange. The acoustics of her hall were planned in such a way that the merchants who traded on the stock exchange could not overhear each other's conversations. In 1949, the building of the New Exchange was rebuilt for the Philharmonic, however, according to Odesa residents, the acoustics in it are still bad.

The wooden ceiling of the hall is made without a single nail from Lebanese cedar, gilded and painted. The walls of the hall are decorated with 6 panels by the artist Mykola Karazin.

The Odesa Zoo is located in Preobrazhenskyi Park near the railway station and Pryvoz.

The zoo was founded in Odessa in 1922, and was originally located on Primorsky Boulevard in the area of ​​the lower garden of the Vorontsov Palace. It was opened in the current location in 1937.

The Odesa Zoo contains rare animals listed in the Red Book of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the European Red List and the Red Book of Ukraine - 24 species: Far Eastern leopards, horses, baboons-hamadrils, brown bears, steppe cranes, peregrine falcons, owls and many more others

The Odesa Zoo is the only one in Ukraine where Indian elephants have successfully bred and became the happy parents of three baby elephants.

Excursions are conducted by advance order.

RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR

On the night of June 10, 2025, a Russian drone attack damaged the technical area of the Odesa Zoo. The explosion killed a domestic ram and damaged the hayloft building. The other animals and zoo employees were unharmed..

Odesa Zoo "Biopark" is another project of the owners of Nemo Dolphinarium. Located on the bypass road in the western part of Odesa, in the "Two Pillars" area.

The zoo is equipped with modern, spacious enclosures designed in accordance with the animals' natural habitat. Giraffes, Himalayan bears, Ussuri tigers, lions, chimpanzees, lemurs, gibbons, llamas, alpacas and others live in the Biopark.

The youngest visitors can interact with domestic animals in the petting zoo. There are playgrounds and animation shows for children, photo zones, public catering points.

The Paleontological Museum of the Odesa National University named after Ilya Mechnykov is one of the oldest in Ukraine and is among the top 10 paleontological museums in the world.

In 1865, simultaneously with the founding of the university, a geological department was opened, which had a paleontological department with 318 exhibits. In 1873, the outstanding zoologist and paleontologist Volodymyr Kovalevsky donated the first large author's collection of fossil remains of freshwater mollusks from the south of France. Since then, the paleontological museum has existed as an independent unit.

The museum contains the richest regional collection of fossil remains collected in the south of the East European Platform (Ukraine and Moldova), and unique collections of fossil fauna and flora that are absent in many other paleontological museums in the world.

The exhibits of the paleontological museum are located in three halls with a total area of ​​500 square meters. The museum's collections number over 60 thousand exhibits. The museum's library has over 10 thousand titles, most of which are works by the founders of paleontology and geology.

The museum's collection includes seven complete skeletons of vertebrates that existed in the region - a mastodon, a three-toed horse, a hornless rhinoceros, a Pliocene camel, an elephant, a cave bear, and a mammoth. Of great value are the skeletons of a mososaurus, an ichthyosaurus, a complete skeleton of a sea lily, and a unique skeleton of a dinornis.

The paleontological museum's exposition includes a diorama "Development of Life on Earth." Fifteen sections of the diorama sequentially unfold the main stages of the development of the planet and life on it. Each stage is illustrated by characteristic forms of fossil organisms, paleogeographic diagrams that reflect the position of land and sea.

The paleobotanical department of the museum is widely represented - it exhibits the Carboniferous flora of Donbas and the Neogene flora of Ukraine and Moldova.

The Passage Hotel on Derybasivska Street in Odesa is one of the most beautiful buildings in the city, striking with the sophistication of its architecture and sculptural compositions (architect Lev Vlodek).

From the beginning, the building was designed as a hotel and shopping center. In the courtyard of the Hotel "Passage" there is a whole street with rows of elite shops. The high glass roof above the gallery complements the feeling of immense space and brings light into the building.

"Passage" remains one of the few hotels in the historical center of Odesa, where you can stay relatively inexpensively.

Arboretum Peremohy (Victory) in the resort district of Odesa Arkadiya was founded in 1960. It occupies an area of 55 hectares.

More than 500 species of trees and shrubs, including heat-loving exotics, have been planted in the park. On Druzhba Avenue, trees were planted by cosmonauts Valeriy Bykovsky, Heorhiy Shonin, and members of hero city delegations. There is a system of artificial ponds with fountains.

Many scenes of the film "Adventures of Electronics" were filmed here.

Peremohy Park is considered one of the best in Odesa, especially after the recent reconstruction.

The Petrographic and Mineralogical Museum of the Odesa National University named after Illya Mechnykov is one of the oldest museums in Odesa and the Odesa region. Its collections include more than 10 thousand samples of minerals and rocks that reflect the material composition of the Earth's crust and the bottom of the World Ocean.

The history of the museum begins with the collection of the Ryshelevsky Lyceum, on the basis of which the Imperial University was opened in 1865. After the disbandment of the University by the Soviet authorities in 1921, the museum room with the collection resumed its activities in 1933 and received the status of the Petrographic and Mineralogical Museum.

The basis of the exposition part of the museum is the systematic collections of minerals and rocks. Thematic expositions on crystallography, genetic mineralogy, ontogeny of minerals, and geochemistry of minerals are presented separately. Along with natural minerals, an exposition of a large group of synthetic minerals is presented.

The meteorite collection stands out in particular. The main groups of meteorites are presented - iron, stony and iron-stone. Among them are meteorites that fell in the Odesa region. These are the "Odesa" and "Hrosslibental" meteorites.

Among the scientific collections, the collection of iron-manganese formations of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, collected in the 80s during scientific voyages, is of particular value.

The exposition presents mineral formations of the Odessa catacombs and karst caves. Regional collections of minerals and rocks represent, first of all, Ukraine with its geological diversity. Of other regional collections, collections of minerals and rocks of the Urals, the Far East, Central Asia, Western and Central Europe (France, Germany, Czech Republic) are of interest.

The geological and mineralogical museum is forming a collection of artifacts of the Sabotinovska and Chernyakhivska cultures found in the Odesa region. The artifacts are represented by tools made of rocks. Their research is carried out within the framework of a new direction - archaeological geology, which uses geological research methods, in particular mineralogical and petrographic, to reconstruct the distribution routes of materials and tools in the Northern Black Sea region.

The Rare Book Museum of the Scientific Library of the Odesa National University named after Ilya Mechnykov was opened in February 1979.

The Rare Book Museum's collection consists of rare and valuable publications selected from the general storage fund. Together with the library's personal collections, the museum's collection includes about 100 thousand publications.

Incunabula - books from the "cradle" period of book printing (the second half of the 15th century) - are represented by works on law, history and mathematics published in Nuremberg, Padua, Venice. The collection of 16th-century publications includes about 500 books in Latin, French, German, Italian, Czech, Polish, Greek, English. It presents publications by famous printers of Western Europe: Aldi, Giunta, Etsn, Plantin, Froben and other publishers.

Among the masterpieces of Ukrainian printing of the 16th century are the famous "Ostroh Bible" by Ivan Fedorov, and the book of the prominent theologian of the 4th century, Sфште Basil of Caesarea from Cappadocia - "On Fasting".

The library's holdings include lifetime editions of political and historical treatises by Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Milton, works by the great Czech educator Yan Amos Comenius, the famous Italian anatomist, botanist and physicist Marcello Malpighi, and the English physiologist William Harvey. The collection includes examples of the activities of the Elsevier House (Holland).

The collection of 18th century publications includes works by prominent European philosophers, scientists, writers, and travelers of that time.

The library presents lifetime and rare editions of classics of Ukrainian literature by Ivan Kotlyarevsky, Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, and Lesya Ukrayinka.

Of exceptional value is the so-called Radzivill Bible, printed in Brzeg (Brest-Litovsk) in 1563 - the first translation of the Bible into Polish.

The Saint Archangel Michael Church in Odesa was founded in 1828.

After the completion of construction in 1833, the church had two side altars: in the name of the Holy Prophet Ilya and in the name of the icon of the Mother of God Feodorivska.

In 1841, a 3rd-class monastery was founded at the church. The construction of the monastery was carried out with the assistance of Odesa merchants. An asylum for round orphans of the spiritual rank was opened at the monastery, later transformed into the Diocesan Women's School. Since then, the monastery has become a center of charity, charity and spirituality, and later became famous for its icon painting and sewing of robes.

In 1923, the monastery was closed, and in 1931, the Archangel Michael Cathedral and the bell tower were blown up. The monastery premises were transferred to the Higher Agricultural School. During the Romanian occupation, in 1942, the monastery was reopened and it remained active for almost 20 years.

The revival of the Archangel Michael monastery began in 1991. A monastery shelter was erected on the territory - a modern building of the House of Mercy, a chapel was built, and the "Christian Odesa" museum was opened.

Subordinate to the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Saint Panteleymon monastery is the largest in Odesa. It was created in 1995 on the site of the Athos courtyard, which was founded in Odesa by Greek monks from Athos in 1876 to receive pilgrims who came from Odesa to worship holy places.

Built from stone mined on Mount Athos and brought to Odesa. The five domes of the Saint Panteleymon monastery, unusual moldings and mosaics on the walls reflect a mixture of various architectural movements of the 19th century.

The Saint Panteleymon Cathedral is located on the third floor, representing the holy Mount Athos.

Saint Paul's Church in Odesa is the cathedral of the German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ukraine, the main Protestant church of the city.

In 1824, the foundation of the church was laid according to the project of the architect Franchesko Boffo. The project turned out to be unsuccessful - the half-completed belfry and 10 columns on the front side soon fell. To complete the construction, other architects were involved, and in 1827 Saint Paul's Church was consecrated. It looked quite simple then, in a strict classical style, with a small tower above the altar part.

After the major reconstruction carried out in 1897 by the German architect Herman Shevrembrandt, the architecture and interior decoration changed a lot. Shevrembrandt gave the church features of the Gothic and Romanesque styles, based on the example of German churches. The 50-meter bell tower became the tallest building in Odesa at that time.

After the Second World War, Saint Paul's Church was used for decades as a sports hall and warehouse. In the 1990s, it was returned to the city's Lutheran community and restored.