Odessa is a very old town, probably founded by ancient Greeks. However, the town as it exists today was founded in 1794, initiated by Catherine the Great. She wanted to establish a new Russian gateway to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. It worked out well. Present-day Odessa has more than one million inhabitants and houses one of the most important harbors of the Ukraine. The old city centre doesn't look like a city of over a million inhabitants. It's only possible to grasp the real size of town when leaving the town eastwards. At the main train station, the slogan City of Heroes welcomes the visitor. Historically, this is not even an exaggeration: a large-scale uprising in 1905 (see Potemkin steps) and strong partisan activity during the German occupation justify the title. Consequently, Odessa was heavily damaged. Partisans mostly operated from an extensive tunnel system called katakombi, which is all in all around 1,000 km long (!) and criss-crosses the underground of the city and the outskirts. A part of it is used as a museum on partisan activity, but it's far away from the city centre.
