Popular Tour Itineraries Featuring Odessa

We recommend spending two full days in Odessa. The first morning, you can take one of our walking city tours to discover the Old Town's main attractions, perhaps coupled with an hour's guided tour of the Odessa Opera and Ballet Theater. In the afternoon, you could take the famous Catacomb Tour, discovering the largest tunnel system in Europe and see how partisans used them to hold out against Nazi occupation. The next day, you could enjoy a Jewish Heritage Tour, or visit Akkerman Fortress, followed by a wine tasting. If you’re visiting Odessa in summer, you can even go for a sail, or at least join everyone else in swimming in the Black Sea.

Odessa's two most famous landmarks are the Potemkin Stairs and the Odessa National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet. A wide stairwell harnessing an optical illusion to seem even longer, the Potemkin Stairs (AKA Odessa Steps) starred in Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 "Battleship Potemkin," in a pivotal scene referenced in everything from The Godfather and The Untouchables, to The Simpsons and Star Wars. Odessa's utterly lavish baroque opera house is grand from every angle, inside and out, and is stuffed with literary references. The "Soviet Miami's" beaches still draw crowds, but be sure to visit the museums devoted to topics from the world's largest catacombs network (running over 2,500 kilometers, since the city's grand buildings required a lot of stone) to Alexander Pushkin. The city's grand boulevards and seaside parks attract many strollers, especially Deribasivska Street, named for the Spanish officer who designed the city, and ending at the City Garden. Francophiles should seek out the monument to the Duke of Richelieu, who served as the region's governor before twice serving as the French prime minister.