Odessa, Ukraine's most French of Greek cities..

In ancient times, the Odessa region was inhabited by the Scythians and Dacians, then colonized by the Greeks, as was the whole of this part of the Black Sea coast.
One of these Greek colonies was called "Odessos".

In 1814, having fled the French Revolution, Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis de Richelieu (his great-uncle was the famous Cardinal Duc de Richelieu), who had the friendship of Tsar Alexander I, took up the post of Governor of Odessa and New Russia from 1803 to 1814.

Assisted by another French émigré, General Alexandre Louis Andrault de Langeron, he drew up a town-planning scheme entrusted to French architects (construction, layout and infrastructure), with wide, straight streets laid out in a checkerboard pattern.

The neoclassical style makes Odessa a beautiful city, conceived in the era of the great urban utopias of the "Enlightenment", where every space is subjected to thorough examination.