Top Ukraine Attractions : Potemkin Steps

There are only very few buildings or structures owing their reputation to a movie in a way the Potemkin steps (actually it's Potëmkin, to be pronounced Potyomkin) in Odessa do. The steps themselves offer two interesting features. One is the fact that you can't see the steps at all when standing atop - all you can see are a few landings. However, when you stand below the steps, all you can see are steps. It's an optical illusion - the uppermost step is 12.5 m, the lowest 21.6 m wide. The difference is too small to notice when climbing the steps. but when you stand in front of the steps, it looks more gigantic and long than it really is. The steps were built within four years and completed in 1841. It only got famous when it appeared in Sergey Eisenstein's silent film "Battleship Potemkin" . The movie was produced in 1925 and deals with an uprising in 1905, which started aboard the battleship Potemkin and eventually spreaded out over the town, involving innocent civilians. The uprising was brutally put down and a line of Cossacks moving down the steps mercilessly shooting everyone fleeing. Many injured and dead people left on the steps, a pram with a baby inside rolling down - the way Eisenstein juxtaposed round with rectangular shapes, humanity with cruelty, individuality with anonymity was unique and some kind of cineastic revolution. When standing in front of the Potemkin steps, one inevitably recalls scenes of Eisenstein's moving film. But who was Potemkin anyway? He was the local ruler and nobleman of Odessa area at the end of the 18th century. Thanks to him, the term "Potemkin's villages" was created. It is said that he set up empty villages with beautiful façades to pretend a prospering countryside when his patroness Catherine the Great travelled the area. Opposite the street below the steps there is a large pier with a new and expensive-looking hotel on it. From here, several ferries run to places around Odessa. There's a beautiful square above the steps with a monument in the middle. The monument is dedicated to Emmanuel Richelieu, a French nobleman, who fled from revolution in his country in 1789 and ended up in Russia. He managed to make himself useful at the Russian court and was finally appointed to the post of governor of Odessa in 1803. Due to a lack of inhabitants, he invited many Germans to settle in and around Odessa. For some reason, the monument shows Richelieu wearing a Roman toga.

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