The formal entrance to Odessa from the sea, the Potemkin Stairs were built between 1837 and 1841 to the design of architect Francesco Boffo. They descend 27 metres from Prymorsky Boulevard to the port in 192 steps arranged in ten flights, flanked by two-metre-thick parapets. An optical illusion built into the design — the steps are wider at the bottom (21.6 m) than at the top (13.4 m) — makes the full length invisible from below, giving the staircase an air of endless grandeur.
Potemkin Stairs
Iconic 192-step staircase immortalized in Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin
A story
Sergei Eisenstein staged the massacre scene in his 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin on these very steps — although the real 1905 uprising saw no such massacre here. The sequence was so powerful that the stairs have been inseparable from the film ever since, and the image of the runaway pram bouncing down the steps is one of the most imitated shots in cinema history.