So back in January, I reviewed The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak, a historical fiction about . Most of the book takes place in what is now firmly within Russian borders; however, remember that Russian power used to stretch much further. One of the places that was covered by Russia is what is now Ukraine. I had a chance to visit Ukraine back in August 2011. It was definitely an eye opening experience.
One of the cities that I visited was Odessa, which is a port city on the Black Sea. As far as Ukrainian cities go, it's pretty rich and fairly large. It was also designed in large part by Catherine the Great, the star of The Winter Palace. There are statues and plaques to Catherine throughout the city. It is said that Catherine wanted a Russian city on the Black Sea in order to be able to better engage with its resource rich Black Sea neighbors and the port is still quite busy today.
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| The Black Sea. |
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| This is sort of weird statue that was put up in the city once the city hit a million people. |
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| Odessa was definitely the most western European influenced city that I saw in Ukraine. |
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| This is the opera house. Gorgeous! |
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| And here's Catherine the Great in her older years. |
One of the main architects that Catherine used to build the city was French and the style of the buildings is indeed very French. It's definitely a lovely city with a lot of love for architecture and the arts. Come back next week for another installment of Literary Locale!
Feel free to grab the Literary Locale logo and join in the fun! I'd love to see where you're reading about!
***All the photos in this blog post are my property***
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Hop on over to Write Meg's blog to take a trip to a French flower shop!
Awesome idea! I actually just started a personal Google map to keep track of the settings of everything I read in 2012. It's fascinating reading about so many interesting places, and Odessa sounds like no exception!
ReplyDeleteYou know, I used to think my reading was very heavily American -- written by American writers, set in American cities. But as I'm going along, I'm realizing that's not true. Of the nine books I've read so far this year, five are set in international locations!
I feel like I tend to read a lot about international places more than domestic. I should start a personal google map too. It would be nice to keep track of where I'm reading about!
DeleteWow! Odessa, Ukraine is where I live :-))
ReplyDeleteIt's such a lovely city!
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