Odesa

Catherine the Great founded Odesa in 1794 and the Duc de Richelieu, an émigré from the French Revolution, governed it as a free port that filled with Greeks, Italians, Jews and Ukrainians — by 1900 a third of the city was Jewish, and Babel wrote its gangsters into literature. The Potemkin Stairs are built with a taper so that from the top only the landings are visible.