Odessa Art Museum

Odesa Fine Arts Museum is one of the principal art galleries of the city of Odesa. Founded in 1899, it occupies the Potocki Palace, itself a monument of early 19th century architecture. The museum now houses more than 10 thousand pieces of art, including paintings by some of the best-known Russian and Ukrainian artists of late 19th and early 20th century. The palace that now houses the gallery is one of the oldest palaces of Odessa. It was ordered by Seweryn Potocki, a former Polish member of parliament who after the partitions of Poland swore loyalty to the tsar of Russia and eventually became a noted Russian diplomat and an ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples. Potocki was also a wealthy landowner and one of his properties, the village of Severinovka named after him contained a quarry of light limestone, from which both the palace and most of Odessa’s public buildings were built.