Odessa, the administrative centre of the Odessa region and the main naval base of the Ukrainian Navy is located in the south of the country. It is the third largest city in Ukraine.
This city stands on the shore of the Odessa Gulf of the Black Sea and serves as the largest commercial sea port of Ukraine.
The total length of the coastline of Odessa is about 30 km. Like any seaside city, Odessa is famous for its beaches. There are a lot of them, and the coastline from Lanzheron to the Great Fountain is, in fact, one continuous city beach.
The climate of Odessa is temperate-marine with subtropical features: mild winter; relatively long spring; warm, long, often very hot summer; long and warm autumn. The average temperature in January is minus 0.5 degrees Celsius, in July – plus 22.6 degrees Celsius. The local climate is characterized by a large number of sunny days (250-300).
As mentioned earlier, Odessa is the largest seaport of Ukraine. It helps in the transportation of grain, sugar, coal, oil products, cement, metals, jute, timber products of the machine-building industry and so on. The city is also a major railway centre.
The main industries of the Odessa region are oil processing, engine building, light, food, woodworking, agricultural, and chemical industries.
The resort area of Odessa stretches for tens of kilometres along the Black Sea coast. One of the most popular resorts and entertainment districts of Odessa is Arcadia. On its territory, there are sanatoriums, rest houses, as well as a hydropathic institution, a resort polyclinic, a tourist base, hotels, numerous restaurants nightclubs and other entertainment facilities.
Odessa International Airport connects Odessa with Vienna, Tel Aviv, Sharm El Sheikh, Istanbul, Ankara, Warsaw, Dubai, Prague, Kyiv. Passenger trains run regularly between Odessa and Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava, Vienna, Berlin, Moscow, St. Petersburg, the main cities of Ukraine, and a lot of other cities of the former USSR.
Odessa is famous for its picturesque streets and yards. In the city, there are a lot of monuments, including very unusual ones. Odessa is one of the most important cultural centres of Ukraine and has a lot of
historic theatres and museums.
Odessa is also a very important scientific and educational centre in Ukraine. It boasts of a good number of institutions of higher learning. Few of them are as below: