Langeron and Otrada beach, Black Sea Yacht Club

Map of Langeron and Otrada beaches, click maps to enlarge.

Tel: 22-22-01

A 1.5 hour walk north of Arcadia beach, 45 minutes north of Otrada beach (below) and the cable cars, and just East of Shevchenko Park (Парк Шевченко)

Langeron Beach is much quieter than Arcadia and the closest beach to the city center.

It is more than a kilometer long and 40 meters wide.

A large yellow shell rock marks the border between the Langeron and Otrada beaches.

Photo from: www.sergeyv.com

Otrada beach (Пляж Отрада) is easy to recognize by the cable cars. For 3 Hryvnia one way, visitors can take the cable cars down to the beach, which takes about 5 minutes. The cable way is 425 meters long with the cars moving just over 16 meters above the ground.

See: Otrada beach entryway and cable cars

Otrada Beach (Плаж Отрада)
Tel: 7287474, 7287449

The Yacht club is Odessa's oldest sport organization, organized in 1875. Today the yacht club has fallen into disrepair. Many Odessites have small homes built in some of the shipping containers that line the port.

Count Alexander Flodorvich Langeron

		Famous Odessites
		This is one of the articles on famous Odessites. See the entire list of Famous figures of Odessa.

Langeron built a summerhouse at the seashore, with today's Langeron archway at the entrance. This is how today's Langeron Beach got its name.

Like Richelieu, Count Alexander Flodorvich Langeron was born in Paris in 1763. His career began in the French guard, but in 1790 he enlisted in the Russian army. In 1799 after becoming a lieutenant general he accepted Russian citizenship.

Langeron commanded the second column of the Austro-Russian army in the battle of Austerlitz, and disgraced after the lost battle, he was sent to Odessa. ^[1]

A friend of the Richelieu, a fellow Frenchman, Count Alexander F. Langeron, took office as governor general of Novorossiia and as City Chief of Odessa on January 1, 1816.^[2] Exports continued to grow under his rule, to 40 million rubles in 1817.

Unlike his friend and predecessor Richelieu, Langeron was little suited to be sole administrator of the huge domain of Novorossiia. Within three years, he petitioned the tsar to reduce his duties. In 1820, he was relieved of his position as City Chief. It was given to a member of the Commercial Court, N. Ia. Tregubov, who retained the post for two years. The two positions of governor general and City Chief were never again entrusted to the same person.^[3]

Tsar Alexander I visited Odessa for the first time in 1818; when Langeron was governor general. (Richelieu had always discouraged an imperial visit for fear that the young city might disappoint the tsar.) But Alexander was charmed by the city his grandmother had called to life on the Black Sea shore. As a token of his satisfaction he gave the city forty thousand rubles for the improvement of the quarantine and for the construction of an aqueduct (over fifty years were required to finish it!). He ordered the Black Sea fleet to carry paving stone from the Crimea to Odessa.^[3]

Langeron opened the Richelieu institute. The institute was only for the elite, only the children of merchants and Greek-immigrants could enroll. During Langeron's tenure, the construction of the Odessa Botanical Gardens and Primorsky Boulevard began.

The most far reaching legislation in Langeron's term was that the port of Odessa was pronounced a history|free port in 1819, a port that allowed the selling and storing of imported goods with no customs duties.

Langeron was not happy in his office. His expenses were double his salary. Apart from the financial drain of the office, many other burdens weighed upon him. He had to travel through Novorossiia twice a year to inspect his territory; the plague visited the port twice during his regime; and he quarreled continuously with the bureaucracy in St. Petersburg.^[4]

Locally, he had constant difficulties with the dissident religious sect, the Dukhobors. They blamed him for the capricious State laws that oppressed them.^[4]

In the judgment of Grand Duke Nicholas, he was "just as zealous as his predecessor,Richelieu, [but] he was not as talented." The Russian literary critic Alekseev pronounced that he was "a valorous general, a good and just man, but absent-minded, a droll fellow, and not at all an administrator."^[4]

Often weighing resignation, he at last gave up the office in the summer of 1822. After retirement, he returned briefly to France and then was called back by Nicholas I to sit on the high court that tried the Decembrists. He died of cholera in 1831 at age sixty-eight in St. Petersburg. His remains were returned to Odessa and laid to rest in the Catholic church.^[4]

Odessa Beaches

Luzanvka Beach | Langeron and Otrada beach, Black Sea Yacht Club
Arcadia and Several Other Beaches