Hemingway said it best of course: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” The same case could be made for Odesa, Ukraine’s Black Sea port, a place full of mouth-watering architecture, a mind-bending mash-up of neoclassical, Gothic Revival, Art Nouveau, Moorish, Soviet Modern, and more. Walking down any given block, there are so many visual distractions – ornate friezes, historic plaques, wrought iron fantasies – that face-planting is a constant danger.
During the 19th century, just outside of the old city center, Odesa’s “French Boulevard” was the place to be, if you could afford it. Home to a globalized elite, Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Italians, French and Greeks built posh villas and oversized country homes along the broad thoroughfare, places to escape the crowded downtown and still flaunt one’s wealth.
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I strolled up the boulevard the other morning after reading a Telegram post claiming a grand old building had been “demolished” the night before when Russian drones and missiles had landed on Odesa. That an architectural gem might have been struck came as no great surprise. After all, the Kremlin bombs Odesa constantly, not distinguishing between the suburbs and the city, the old and the new, the ugly and the sublime.
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