Old photos · Ukraine

Old photos of Odesa

Four in five of Odesa's photographs date from 1955 or later — but the archive's Odesa begins with the City Theatre in 1859, fourteen years before it burned.

8,511 photographs within 8 km of the centre · counted 25 September 2026

Time Portal's archive holds about 8,500 photographs of Odesa (Odessa), taken between 1859 and 2000, each pinned to the spot where the photographer stood. 80% of them date from 1955 or later and are free to browse at map.timeportal.app with no account; the older ones open with Pro. The oldest, dated 1859 in the archive, shows the City Theatre, seen from Rishelievska Street — the building that burned down in 1873.

Photographs: 8,500
Oldest: 1859
Busiest decade: 1970s
Free, 1955 on: 80%

Odesa's first City Theatre seen from Rishelievska Street in 1859 — The City Theatre from Rishelievska Street, 1859

How many photographs, decade by decade

The busiest decades for Odesa are the 1970s and the 1980s — 2,411 and 1,785 photographs. 248 were taken before 1900. Everything from 1955 onward is free to open on the map; the older photographs are part of Pro.

Photographs of Odesa in the Time Portal archive, within 8 km of the centre, by the year each was taken. Counted 25 September 2026.
Decade	Relative size	Photographs
before 1860		1
1860s		8
1870s		63
1880s		37
1890s		139
1900s		185
1910s		198
1920s		107
1930s		234
1940s		338
1950s		923
1960s		1,755
1970s		2,411
1980s		1,785
1990s		326

Where the photographs were taken

Counted in a small square around each place — about 200 metres each way — so a number is every photograph taken there, of the place itself or of the street beside it. Each place opens the map on that spot.

Place	Photos	Oldest
The Potemkin Stairs	909	1870–1871
The Opera House	923	1859
Deribasivska Street	626	1910–1913
Primorsky Boulevard	1,710	1870–1873
Privoz Market	44	1960–1965
The railway station	305	1885–1886

What changed

Odesa was laid out to a plan at the end of the eighteenth century, and its centre has kept that grid. The City Theatre in the archive's first photograph burned down in 1873; the Opera House that replaced it opened in 1887.

The Boulevard Stairs down to the port, finished in 1841, were renamed the Potemkin Stairs in 1955, fifty years after the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin — the stairs Sergei Eisenstein made famous in his film of 1925.

A crowd watching an Oldsmobile climb the Boulevard Stairs, today the Potemkin Stairs, in Odesa around 1904 — An Oldsmobile climbing the 193 steps of the Boulevard Stairs — today the Potemkin Stairs — 1904–1905

Crowds among the stalls at the Privoz market in Odesa in the early 1960s — The Privoz market, 1960–1965

Questions about old photos of Odesa

Where can I see old photos of Odesa on a map?

On Time Portal: about 8,500 photographs of Odesa, each pinned where it was taken, most with the direction the camera faced. The map is free in any browser at map.timeportal.app — photographs from 1955 on need no account — and there is an app for iPhone and iPad.

What is the oldest photograph of Odesa in the archive?

The oldest precisely dated photograph, from 1859, shows the City Theatre, seen from Rishelievska Street — the building that burned down in 1873. 248 of the Odesa photographs were taken before 1900.

Which years of Odesa are best covered?

The 1970s, with 2,411 photographs, and the 1980s, with 1,785. 80% of the Odesa photographs date from 1955 or later.

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The counts on this page are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 — credit Time Portal and link here. The photographs are not ours to license: they belong to their photographers and the archives that keep them.