Potemkin Stairs
The Potemkin Stairs is the most important attraction of Odessa, which is a ladder towards the sea. From its top you can see the whole Gulf of Odessa, the port and the harbor.
From the foundation of Odessa, she needed a good attack on the sea, because the port was in the lowland, and the city itself was on a hill of 30-35 meters. Then the city ended in a steep descent beyond Nikolaev Street. To go down to the sea, you had to go along a very steep path. Little information has been preserved about the progress of the construction of the stairs. It is only known that the city allocated 200,000 rubles and gave a period of 7 months for construction, and the main initiator of the construction was Count Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov. At that time, the Odessa treasury was more than many European cities, due to the fact that in 1819 — 1858 it was possible to import and export goods duty-free from here. The budget was replenished thanks to various port charges. It got to the point that Odessa lent 800,000 rubles to St. Petersburg for the construction and arrangement of customs buildings.
Odessa archives store several projects of the stairs, but the project of architects K. was chosen. AND. Potier, F. K. Boffo and A. AND. Melnikova. The stairs were conceived as a symbol of Odessa and a parade of entrance for visitors from the sea. In 1837 — 1841, the stairs were built, and for a long time she did not have her own name. Everyone called her differently: Primorskaya, Kamennaya, Port, Potemkina, Bolshaya, Rischelievskaya, St. Nikolaev Boulevard. Initially, the stairs had 200 steps and 10 sites, but after the expansion and reconstruction of the port, 8 lower steps were poured.
At the edges of the stairs are framed by two-meter parapets, the length of the stairs is 142 meters, and the height is 27. The architecture of the Potemkin Stairs is made in perspective, the base width is 21.6 meters, and the top is 13.4 meters. If you look from above, it seems that the width of the stairs is the same, and if you look from below, the staircase seems longer than it really is.
Potemkin Stairs is a visiting card of the city, which is mentioned in the works of art by Mark Twain, Alexander Green, Jules Verne, Valentina Katayev and many other writers and poets.
