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From 2odessa.com The most comprehensive guide to Odessa, Ukraine

Cordinates 46° 29' 21" N, 30° 44' 36" E

Maps of Primorsky Boulevard Click maps to enlarge. Primorsky Boulevard Childrens' Palace · Optical illusion · Glushko bust Duke Richelieu Monument · Potemkin Stairs Semi-circular bldgs | Maritime Palace | Londonskaya Hotel Pushkin's bust | Mayor's office Crimean Cannon | Artificial Cave Virtual Tour of Odessa Primorsky · Port · Opera Theater Deribasovskaya · Cathedral Park · Ekaterininskaya Preobrazhenskaya · Primary streets Privoz Market | Cemetery | Shevchenko Frantsuzsky | Odessa Beaches | Shevchenko Park Odessa Afield | Unique Sites

Potemkin Stairs Soviet era photo of the stairs Funicular (elevator) built in 2004, photo from russian-women.net

The Potemkin Stairs ( Ukrainian: Потьомкінські сходи, Pot’omkins’ki Skhоdy, Russian: Потёмкинская лестница) is a giant stairway in Odessa, Ukraine. The stairs are considered a formal entrance into the city from the direction of the sea and are the best known symbol of Odessa.^[1]

The stairs were originally known as the Boulevard steps, the Giant Staircase,^[2] or the Richelieu steps.^[3]

The top step is 12.5 meters (41 feet) wide, and the lowest step is 21.7 meters (70.8 feet) wide. The staircase is 27 meters high, and extends for 142 meters, but it gives the illusion of greater length.^[4][5][6]

The stairs were so well designed that they create an optical illusion. A person looking down the stairs sees only the landings, and the steps are invisible, but a person looking up sees only steps, and the landings are invisible.^[1][7]

History

Odessa, perched on a high steppe plateau, needed direct access to the harbor below it. Before the stairs were constructed, winding paths and crude wooden stairs were the only access to the harbor.^[1]

The original 200 stairs were designed in 1825 by Franz Karlowicz Boffo, St. Petersburg architects Avraam I. Melnikov and Pot'e.^[1][7][8] The staircase cost 800,000 rubles to build.^[1]

In 1837, the decision was made to build a "monstrous staircase", which was constructed between 1837 and 1841. An English engineer named Upton constructed the stairs. Upton had fled Britain while on bail for forgery.^[9] Greenish-grey sandstone from the extreme northeastern Italian town of Trieste, (at the time it was an Austrian town) was shipped in.^[1]

As erosion destroyed the stairs, in 1933 the sandstone was replaced by rose-grey granite from the Boh area, and the landings were covered with asphalt. Eight steps were lost under the sand when the port was being extended, reducing the number of stairs to 192, with ten landings.^[1][7]

The steps were made famous in Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 silent film The Battleship Potemkin.

After the Soviet revolution, in 1955 the Primorsky Stairs were renamed Potemkin Stairs to honor the 50th anniversary of the Battleship Potemkin uprising.^[10] After Ukrainian independence, like many streets in Odessa, the Potemkin Stairs name was returned to their original name, Primorsky Stairs. Most Odessites still know and refer to the stairs after their Soviet name.

At the bottom of the stairs is the Odessa Sea Port at the top of the stairs is the Duke de Richelieu Monument.

Odessa funicular

On the left side of the stairs, is the Odessa funicular (Одесский фуникулёр). The original funicular was built in 1902 to transport people up instead of walking.

In 1895, engineer N. K. Pyatnitskiy, a graduate of the Petersburg institute of the railroad and highway engineers, drafted a proposal for the funicular. The city authorities declared a competition for the design through St. Petersburg newspapers. Only one Paris firm responded, so the design was given to Pyatnitskiy.^[11]

The original funicular was built between 1900-1902. At the top of the stairs, workers built a wooden open pavilion on Primorsky Boulevard, a stone building for the cashier, and a small power station. The cars were delivered from Paris, designed for 35 passengers each. 300 lamps were added along the funicular route. The work was overseen by B. Ya. Rakovskogo. (В. Я. Раковского). The Odessa funicular opened on June 2, 1902.^[11]

The funicular broke in 1919, and the funicular was seized by the state in 1920. The funicular was repaired September 20, 1926, working again for the second time. The funicular could take up to 4000 people a day.^[11][12]

World War II stopped the funicular for a second time. For four years after the end of the war the funicular was broken. In 1948 the newspaper Labor reported that in Odessa had "began work on the restoration of funicular".^[11]

In 1969, the funicular was whut down and replaced by an escalator built in 1970.^[11][7]The design of lower pavilion resembled the design of Soviet pavilion on the exhibition of Expos-67 in Montreal, Canada.^[12]

From 1902 to 1969, 67 years, the price was 2 kopecks. In 1970 the price increased to 3 kopecks.^[12]

The absence of experienced maintenance engineers for the escalators in Odessa, and also difficulty with finding spare parts, meant that through decades the escalator began to work only on one side - on the lift, and the stairs on the opposite direction were used as the source of spare parts. This position could not continue indefinetly, and the elevator stopped permenantly in 1997.^[12]

In 1998 the construction work began again. The change of city authority changed priorities and the construction stopped.^[12] The money for the elevator's repair was stolen.^{[citation needed]}

The opening ceremony for the present funicular took place on September 2, 2005, the two hundred eleventh birthday of Odessa.^[11]

Quotes

• A flight of steps unequalled in magnificence, leads down the decivity to the shore and harbour^[13]
• This expensive and useless toy, is likely to cost nearly forty thousand pounds.^[14]
• One of the great sights of Odessa is the staircase street that extends from the harbor shore to the end of the fine boulevard at the top of the hill. Seeing it, don't you involuntarily wonder why such an idea is not oftener carried out? The very simplicity of the design gives it a monumental character; the effect is certainly dignified and majestic. It would be no small task to climb all those stairs. Twenty steps in each flight, ten flights to climb, we should be glad of the ten level landings for breathing space before we reached the top of the hill.^[15]
• From the centre of the Boulevard, a staircase called the "escalier monstre" descends to the beach. The contractor for this work was ruined. It is an ill-conceived design if intended for ornament; its utility is more than doubtful and its execution defective, that its fall is already anticipated. As Odessa wag has prophesied that the Duc de Richelieu, whose statute is at the top, will be the first person to go down it.^[16]
• Viewed from one side, the figure Duc de Richelieu Monument seems so miserable that wags claim that it seems to be saying "'Give money here'"^[17]
• Seen from below the vast staircase, the Duc de Richelieu Monument "appeared crushed" and, the statue should have been of colossal dimensions or else it should have been placed elsewhere.^[18]

Photos

Stairs

View of Odessa Port from the postcard of early 1900's Private Collection From Artukraine.com	Photo from between 1890 and 1900, now available at the Library of Congress, Originally from the Detroit Publishing Company 1905.
Stairs from the port

Funiclar

		Elevator post 1970.	Early 2000's
2002 photo	2003 photo
	lower pavilion
These stairs are all that remains of a bridge which connected the park to the Potemkin Stairs. See the bridge in the elevator photo above.[12]

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Herlihy, Patricia (1987, 1991). Odessa: A History, 1794-1914. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-916458-15-6, hardcover; ISBN 0-916458-43-1, paperback reprint. p. 140
2. ^ Karakina, Yelena; Tatyana Samoilova, Anna Ishchenko (2004). Touring Odessa. BDRUK. ISBN 966-8137-01-9. p. 32
3. ^ (1990) Prince Michael Vorontsov: Viceroy to the Tsar. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. ISBN 0-7735-0747-7. p. 119. Referencing (1965) USSR: Nagel Travel Guide Series. New York: McGraw Hill. p. 616
   
   • Bell, Christopher M; Bruce A Elleman (2003). Naval Mutinies of the Twentieth Century: An International Perspective. Routledge (UK). ISBN 0-7146-5460-4. p. 18, 25
     
   • Montefiore, S Sebag (2001). The Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-27815-2. p. 498 "The Richelieu Steps in Odessa were renamed the "Potemkin Steps"...
     
   • Woodman, Richard (2005). A Brief History Of Mutiny: A Brief History of Mutiny at Sea. Carroll & Graf Publishers. ISBN 0-7867-1567-7. p. 223
4. ^ Herlihy, p. 140 "12.5 meters wide and 21.5 meters wide"
5. ^ Kononova, p. 51 "12.5 m at the top and 21.6 m at the bottom"
6. ^ Karakina, p. 31 "13.4 and 21.7 meters wide"
7. ^ ^a b c d Kononova, G. (1984). Odessa: A Guide. Moscow: Raduga Publishers. p. 51
8. ^ Kononova confusingly writes on page 48, "The idea of an architectural ensemble with a broad flight of stone steps leading to the sea which links the high bank with the low shore and provides a gateway to the city, belongs to the well-known St. Petersburg 19th century architect Avraam Melnikov." But on page 51 writes, "The famous Potemkin stairs leading from the square to the sea and Uiltsa Suvorova (Suvorov St.) was designed in 1825 by F. Boffo".
9. ^ Reid, Anna (2000). Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine. Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3792-5. p. 61
10. ^ Karakina, p. 31
11. ^ ^{a b c d e f} ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Одесский_фуникулёр
12. ^ ^{a b c d e f} odessatrolley.com/Tram/Funiculair.htm
13. ^ Herlihy, p. 140, Quoting Koch, Charles (1855). The Crimea and Odessa: Journal of a tour. p. 260.
14. ^ Herlihy, p. 140, Quoting Hommaire de Hell, Xavier (1847). Travels in the Steps of the Caspian Sea, the Crimea, the Caucasus, etc.. p. 10.
15. ^ Emery, Mabel Sarah (1901). Russia Through the Stereoscope: A Journey Across the Land of the Czar from Finland to the Black Sea. Underwood & Underwood. p. 210
16. ^ Herlihy, p. 140, Quoting Jeese, William (1841). Notes of a Half-Pay in Search of Health: Russia, Circassia, and the Crimea, in 1839-1840. 2 vols.. volume 1, p. 183.
17. ^ Herlihy, p. 317, Quoting William Hamm, 1862, p. 95-96.
18. ^ Herlihy, p. 317, paraphrasing Shirley Brooks, 185, p. 18.

On Kowalevski dacha there was also a funicular, which connected the summer residence with the beach. It was destroyed after a landslide.^[12]

Continue your virtual tour by walking to the Semi-circular buildings overlooking the Duke Monument.