Attractions of Odesa region

The Museum "Foreign Writers in Odesa" was officially founded in Odesa on January 1, 2025 as a result of the reorganization of the former Oleksandr Pushkin Literary and Memorial Museum in Odessa in compliance with the Law of Ukraine "On Decolonization".

The museum is located in the historic building of the former Hotel du Nord in the center of Odesa. It is a branch of the Odesa Literary Museum.

The exposition of the Museum "Foreign Writers in Odesa" should cover the biographies and works of at least two dozen world-famous writers who visited and lived in Odesa at different times in the 19th and 20th centuries. These include, for example, famous American writers Mark Twain and Theodore Dreiser, Romanian classic Mihai Eminescu, Oleksandr Green, Ivan Bunin, etc.

On the evening of Friday, January 31, 2025, the Russians fired Iskander ballistic missiles at Odesa. The strike hit the historic city center. Seven people were injured. 19 architectural monuments included in the UNESCO World Heritage List were seriously damaged, including the Museum of Foreign Writers in Odesa. The museum building suffered significant damage: windows and doors were broken, and the roof and walls were seriously damaged.

Due to the consequences of the Russian missile strike, the "Foreign Writers in Odesa" museum's re-exhibition has been postponed indefinitely.

The family winery "Kolonist" was founded in Krynychne near Bolhrad in 2005 by the Plachkov family with the aim of producing local premium wines. The winery was named after the Bulgarian colonists who settled this territory at the beginning of the 19th century. The founder and owner of the winery, Ivan Plachkov, is a descendant of this people who turned the scorched steppe into a flourishing and fertile land.

The production of Bessarabian wines was established here using classical technology and modern equipment. The company owns 21 hectares of young vineyards and 60 hectares of vineyards about 35 years old, which are located on the southwestern slopes of the largest freshwater lake in Ukraine - Yalpuh. Due to the sloping slopes, the vineyards receive double sunlight - from the sun and reflected from the surface of the lake, and are also well blown by winds. 33 hectares of vineyards, pruned using the Guyot and Cordon methods, grow on loamy soils rich in minerals with deep limestone deposits. These pruning systems ensure low yields and, combined with a special terroir, produce high-quality grapes.

The quality of production is ensured by the latest equipment from France, Germany and Italy and aging in traditional 100-year-old French oak barrels. The technology was developed by the famous Bordeaux oenologist Olivier Dogue. The Kolonist winery annually produces about 280 thousand bottles of wine of 10 varieties. There is a Wine Center with a tasting room where you can taste wines from the entire line of the "Kolonist" brand: Chardonnay, Sukholymanske, Traminer, Aligote, Riesling, Pinot Noir, Cabernet dessert, Cabernet dry, Merlot, Odesa black dry, Odesa black dessert, Odesa black aged.

At the Festival of Young Wine, tourists have the opportunity to join the harvest process, start it barefoot in "sharapans" to incendiary music. During each of the events, tourists have the opportunity to get acquainted with the local traditions of the multinational Danube Bessarabia.

One full day of stay at the winery during the festivals includes: a tour of the territory, vineyards, wine cellars, wine, oil and vinegar production, a tasting room with a fireplace; full board (local Bessarabian cuisine and "Kolonist" wine); during the harvest, the program includes picking grapes yourself and the opportunity to crush grapes with your feet to incendiary music; a professional wine master class and tasting of wines, oils and balsamic vinegar.

The "Kolonist" winery is a participant in the "Wine and Taste Route of Ukrainian Bessarabia" project.

The Folk Museum of Bessarabian Culture "Stara Kishta" (from Bulgarian - "Old House") was created in the village of Kubei in 2018 in the old house of the Bulgarian Raynov family, who moved to Kubei at the beginning of the 20th century.

The founders of the museum managed to preserve the house, which is more than a hundred years old, in its original form and recreate the atmosphere and everyday life of a traditional Bulgarian house of those times. Over the years, the museum has been filled with ancient authentic household items and crafts - from unique devices for removing shoes, traditional tables at which the whole family gathered, to beds, pillows, icons and embroidered blankets, shirts, dresses and runners.

The "Stara Kashta" museum regularly hosts various master classes in folk crafts, restores and demonstrates ancient national Bulgarian rituals, holds meetings, photo shoots in authentic costumes, tastings of national cuisine, performances by folk groups, etc.

"Stara Kashta" is a place where you can experience the authentic Budzhak and Bessarabian culture, life and traditions of the peoples living in southern Ukraine.

The "Steppe Ukraine" Museum was established in Odesa in 1925. Ukrainian folk culture was represented by collections of embroidery, carpets, ceramics, toys that came from the Black Sea region, Podillya, Middle Dnipro, Polissya, etc. The museum's collections numbered about two thousand exhibits. As a result of the Soviet authorities' curtailment of the policy of "Ukrainization" and local history research, the museum was closed in 1931, a significant part of the museum's collection was transferred to the Odesa Historical and Local Lore Museum, and most of the museum's employees were repressed.

After Ukraine gained independence, in April 2006, the Steppe Ukraine Museum was revived as a branch of the Odesa Historical and Local Lore Museum.

The first part of the museum's exposition tells about the creation of "Steppe Ukraine", its founders and activists, and the traditions of museum work. Here, the traditional interior of a Ukrainian manor house is recreated.

In the second part of the exhibition, through the creation of residential complexes, an idea of ​​the material and spiritual culture of the main ethnic groups of the region is given - Old Believers, Greeks, Jews, Karaites, Moldovans, Gagauzes, Bulgarian and German colonists. The main element of each complex is a national costume, around which are placed weaving products, dishes, furniture, household tools, and products of decorative and applied art.

The Winehall Oksamytne Viticulture and Wine Farm was founded in 1998 on the site where Count Davidov's chateau had been established 120 years ago. It has 550 hectares of its own vineyards in the valley of Lake Yalpuh. It produces wines under its own brands Villa Tinta (dry ordinary wines from local and European grape varieties), Tintarella (sparkling wines using Sharma technology) and Tinta (semi-sweet blended wines).

The plant is equipped with modern equipment for all stages of production, from Italian crushers and French pneumatic presses Vaslin Bucher for careful and gentle pressing of grapes and ending with the Italian line for bottling of still and sparkling wines. You can get acquainted with the technological process of grape processing, production and bottling of wine during the tour and tasting.

The excursion program begins with a tasting of the sparkling wine on the factory roof with a view of the vineyards and Lake Yalpuh at a distance of 1-4 km from the winery. Harvesting can also be observed during the grape processing season. Then the tour continues in the grape processing shop, bottling shop and champagne shop. After the excursion, guests are invited to the tasting room in the cellars of wineries. Excursion is included in the cost of tasting.
    
"Winehall Oksamytne" is a participant in the project "Wine and Taste Route of Ukrainian Bessarabia". Since 2018, "Winehall Oksamytne" together with winemakers of the Yalpuh Lake Valley participates in the creation of one of the first in Ukraine PDO Yalpuh for wines from Odesa Black and Sukholimanskiy and PGI of the same name for wine from European grapes.

The memorial house-museum of the outstanding Ukrainian academician Volodymyr Filatov is located in Odesa on Frantsuzky Boulevard next to the Institute of Eye Diseases founded by him.

The exposition of the house-museum introduces not only the personality and activities of Filatov, but also the cultural and historical context of the late 19th - mid-20th centuries - the dwelling itself, furniture, personal belongings of the scientist are exhibits reflecting the life and everyday life of that period. The exposition contains unique photographs, manuscripts, letters, rare publications, personal belongings and photographic materials of the family of Academician Filatov.

In addition to the house-museum, the Museum-Exhibition Complex named after Volodymyr Filatov also includes the Academician's Cabinet-Museum, located in the main building of the Institute of Eye Diseases.

The Ananiv Historical and Art Museum was opened on November 6, 1977 on the main street of Ananiv as a branch of the Odesa Art Museum.

The building, which houses the museum, was built in the 80s of the XIX century. Before the Bolshevik coup of 1917, it was one of the most profitable houses.

The museum's exposition presents works by local artists - Rostyslav Paletsky, Pavlo Lyakhovsky, Heorhiy Byelal and others. The pearl of the exposition is a painting by the famous battle artist Yevhen Stolytsya, a student of Hennadiy Ladyzhensky, Mykhaylo Klodt, and Arkhip Kuyindzhi. During the opening of the museum, 3 halls with unique materials about the artist's life were set aside for the permanent exhibition of the works of Academician of Painting Yevhen Stolytsya.

Three more halls of the museum are devoted to the local history and history of Ananiv and the district - the exposition presents the everyday objects of Ananiv residents, materials about the years of the Second World War and the pre-revolutionary period of the city of Ananiv.

The ruins of the ancient city of Thira were excavated by archaeologists near the walls of the Akkerman fortress.

The ancient city on the shore of the estuary at the mouth of the Tiras (Dniester) river was founded in the 6th century BC by immigrants from Greek Miletus, and in the 3rd century BC it reached its greatest prosperity. The main occupations of the inhabitants of Thira were agriculture, viticulture, handicrafts, fishing, and trade with the indigenous population of Transnistria. The city minted its own silver coin. From the beginning of the 2nd century AD, the city of Thira was part of the Roman Empire.

It was destroyed by the Goths in the second half of the 3rd century. A settlement of the Slavic tribes of Tiberians and Ulychi soon arose on the ruins, then a Genoese fortress.

Archaeological excavations have been carried out since 1900 and are still ongoing.

The estate of the famous European winemaker Andre Anselm was built in the village of Shabo in the middle of the 19th century. The manor house is made in the style of the French Renaissance and resembles a miniature castle.

It was here that Anselm settled and was engaged in breeding new grape varieties, the seedlings of which he successfully sold (including abroad).

During the Soviet regime, Anselm's estate was nationalized and an anti-tuberculosis dispensary was placed in it.

The original building of the Arab Cultural Center in Odesa has every chance of becoming an architectural monument.

The large Moorish-style house was built in 2001 at the expense of Arab businessman Adnan Kivan. The mosque stands out strongly in the urban development and is a real eastern pearl of Odesa.

When entering the prayer hall, men and women must remove their shoes, and women are issued long robes with hoods. In the prayer hall, openwork elm on the stair railings and architectural elements make the interior decoration of the mosque elegant and airy. Apart from a few small bookshelves on both sides of the hall, there is no other furniture. The entire floor is covered with a soft carpet, the pattern of which seems to divide the carpet into equal squares, which serve as conventional delimitation of the seats for those who pray. Under the ceiling, the main decoration is a large crystal chandelier shining with hundreds of lights.

The Arab Cultural Center in Odesa is open for tours that introduce visitors to Arab culture. There is an Arabic language school and a library.

Arkadiya is a resort area of ​​the city, the Odesa Riviera, the center of night life.

It is famous for its modern, well-equipped beaches and a large number of restaurants, night clubs and other entertainment facilities that work around the clock during the holiday season.

In the park territory of Arkadiya by the sea there are hotels, sanatoriums, holiday homes, a hydrotherapy center, and a resort clinic.

The Armenian Church of the Assumption of the Virgin (Surb Astvatsatsin) has been preserved since the Middle Ages, when a large Armenian community lived in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi.

The temple has a squat shape, because the Muslim authorities forbade the construction of Christian churches higher than mosques. Over the centuries, the Armenian Church was repeatedly rebuilt and expanded. Ancient paintings and medieval marble slabs (khachkars) with carved inscriptions have been preserved on the walls, the earliest of which dates back to the 10th century.

The Armenian Church operated until 1940. Until recently, it was the base of an archaeological expedition. In 2013, the church was returned to the Armenian community.

On the territory there is a Sarmatian crypt of the 3rd century AD, made of stone slabs, found on the eastern outskirts of the city.

The Artsyz Historical and Local Lore Museum was founded in 1977 on the initiative of a local history teacher, Dmytro Cherbadzhy, who became its first director.

The museum collection consists of more than 8 thousand exhibits from different periods, in particular Scythian, Slavic and German (1816-1940), of which 200 are original. The halls of the museum present ethnographic expositions of everyday life and traditions of representatives of Ukrainian, Bulgarian and German nationalities - "Bessarabian House of the 19th Century", "Bessarabian House of the 20th Century", "Bessarabian Barn", "Bessarabian Courtyard".

In 2021, an exposition of women's dresses of different nationalities of the multinational Bessarabian region and an exposition of money were opened.

The branch of the museum of the Main Office of the National Police in the Odesa region opened in Artsyz in 2022 in the police station No. 1 of the Bolhrad district police department.

The museum's exposition presents rare items related to the work of law enforcement officers at different times - from Kyivan Rus to the present. The museum's collection includes over a thousand exhibits, which were collected for about a year: photographs, documents and personal belongings of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, their awards, samples of weapons and uniforms of different historical periods, magazines of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, samples of official transport. Many unique exhibits were donated by pensioners of internal affairs bodies.

The half-destroyed bell tower is the only surviving fragment of the Church of the Assumption in Kiliia. It is also the only surviving structure of the Kiliia fortress, except for the defensive moat.

The Church of the Assumption of the Mother of God was built in the 15th century by the order of the Moldavian ruler Stephen III the Great at the same time as the construction of the fortress according to the project of the Byzantine architect and military engineer Privani, who gave the church some features of Sophia of Constantinople.

In 1825-1830, a two-story bell tower was built near the main entrance to the Church of the Assumption.

In 1947, the Soviet authorities razed the ancient temple to the ground. Today, only the remains of the bell tower have survived.