The city of Odessa was founded by a decree of the Empress Catherine the Great in 1794. From 1819 to 1858 Odessa was a free port. In the 19th century it became the fourth largest city of Imperial Russia and one of the most prosperous. Its early growth owed much to the work of the Duc de Richelieu, who served as the city's governor between 1803-1814. Having fled the French Revolution, he had served in Catherine's army against the Turks. Its historical architecture has a style more Mediterranean than Russian, having been heavily influenced by French and Italian styles. Some buildings are built in a mixture of different styles, including Art Nouveau, Renaissance and Classicist.
Odessa became home to an extremely diverse population of Albanians, Armenians, Bulgarians, Frenchmen, Germans, Greeks, Italians, Jews, Poles, Romanians, Russians, Ukrainians, and traders representing many other nationalities. Its cosmopolitan nature was documented by the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, who lived in internal exile in Odessa between 1823-1824.
In 1905 Odessa was the site of a workers' uprising supported by the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin. Sergei Eisenstein's famous motion picture The Battleship Potemkin commemorated the uprising and included a scene where hundreds of Odessan citizens were murdered on the great stone staircase (now popularly known as the "Potemkin Steps"), in one of the most famous scenes in motion picture history. Between the 1970s and 1990s many of Odessa Jews emigrated to US mostly settling in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brighton Beach, sometimes known as "Little Odessa". Still many remained and Odessa's vibrant culture famous far beyond the city has quite distinct Jewish flavour. Some of the best Soviet comedians where born in Odessa, earning her the title 'the capital of the Russian humour'.