Odessa Historic Center
The historic centre of Odessa, part of the Black Sea port city developed on the site of Khazimbe, is a densely built area planned according to classicist guidelines and characterized by buildings of two to four storeys and wide vertical streets lined with trees. The historic architecture reflects the city's rapid economic development in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The site includes theatres, bridges, monuments, religious buildings, schools, private palaces and tenement houses, clubs, hotels, banks, shopping centres, warehouses, the stock exchange and other public and administrative buildings designed by architects and engineers, mostly from Italy but also from other nationalities. Eclecticism is the main feature of the historic city centre architecture. The site bears witness to the city's highly diverse ethnic and religious communities and is an outstanding example of cross-cultural exchange and the development of a multicultural, multiethnic Eastern European city in the 19th century.