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Monument to the founders of Odesa

Dismantled mounument in Odesa, Ukraine

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 15, 2025
Entity authorityQ4343543 ↗
Source-derived summary

Monument to the founders of Odesa (Ukrainian: Засновникам Одеси, romanized: Zasnovnykam Odesy), also known as the monument to Empress Catherine II of Russia and her companions (José de Ribas, François Sainte de Wollant, Platon Zubov and Grigory Potemkin), was a monument located in Odesa, Ukraine, on then Katerynska Square (now European Square).

The original monument was built in 1900 by the project of Odesa architect Yuri Melentiovich Dmitrenko, Sculptor M. Popov, with the participation of sculptors B.V. Eduards and M.D. Mentsione, engineer A. Sikorski. This monument was toppled by the Bolsheviks in 1920. The monument was restored in 2007 with the private funds of Ruslan Tarpan, an Odesa businessman and member of the Odesa City Council.

As part of derussification in Ukraine, it was dismantled on 28 December 2022.

History of the monument

Construction

Catherine II of Russia by her rescript in 1794, initiated the beginning of the construction of the city of Odesa and its port on the exact location of the Ottoman settlement Khadjibey. A port located at the location of modern Odesa was first mentioned in 1415 when it was known as Khadjibey.

In 1900, a monument to Catherine and her companions was erected in the city. The opening of the monument took place on 6 May 1900 in the eponymous square in the city center.

The prospect of building a Monument to the Founders of the city was offered as early as 1890 at a meeting of the Odesa City Council to discuss the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Odesa.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Monument to the founders of Odesa” is dismantled mounument in Odesa, Ukraine. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Monument, founders and Odesa, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1900, 1920, 2007, 2022—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Monument, founders and Odesa is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

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The phrase “dismantled mounument in Odesa, Ukraine” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4343543. The first chronological checks are 1900, 1920, 2007 and 2022.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Monument to the founders of Odesa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.