Recently, my girlfriend asked me "what will you write about when all the interesting places in Odesa are over?". Then I thought about it. I decided that there is still the Odesa region, there is still a whole country and in general the whole world.
And then, studying the monument to de Ribas, I saw that next to it there are ordinary, at first glance, stairs. And their history is very long! And then I realized that in general, in Odesa, any stone has its own history and there are still many topics for posts.
Today I will tell you about the stairs of the dead and the legend associated with them. And this place should be visited at least in order to take great photos there, as well as sit there in peace and quiet. Well, in order to touch the story!
History of the Ladder of the Dead
Not far from the Seaport of Odesa there is an unimportant place called "The Ladder of the Dead". This path connects the port area with Deribasovskaya street. This staircase went down in the history of the city as the most mysterious place where terrible things happened.
The parapet of the staircase is made of raw shell rock and the steps are made of lava tiles. Until the middle of the 19th century in Odesa, Italian lava was used for paving sidewalks, which was brought by ships that came for grain. Lava blocks they used as ballast.
Square tiles of a dark gray-bluish color were hewn out of the blocks. By the end of the 1950s, almost all sidewalks were asphalted, and courtyards were paved with lava tiles. It is from such a tile that the steps of our staircase are folded - it turns out that it is almost 200 years old!
Officially, the staircase is unnamed, but sometimes it is called the “Ladder of the Dead” because one of the darkest and most sinister Odesa legends is associated with it.
The fact is that in the middle of the 19th-century men began to disappear without a trace, mainly members of the crews of ships that came to the port of Odesa. For a long time, the investigation did not give any result. The reason for the disappearances was found out only by chance.
A certain lady bought a meat pie from an elderly pretty woman at the bazaar and, to her horror, found a phalanx of a human finger in the filling. The buyer reported the find to the police and the trader was arrested.
It turned out that the woman “worked” in one of the houses on the street of “white sheets” (as the “red-light district” street was called in Odesa at that time). She killed her clients and made them into the filling for pies, which she herself sold.
If something alarmed her or she heard something suspicious, she threw the body out the window, which overlooked an unlit area of the square between her house and the described staircase. Then she went downstairs and buried the body. They say that the police found more than 20 male bodies in the place indicated by them.
The woman could not explain why she did it, but was declared sane and was sentenced to death.
She starred in many films
An amazing story, isn't it? .. It is transmitted, as befits such "tricks", from mouth to mouth, from source to source, and the "staircase of the dead" itself was included in the list of the most mysterious places in the city.
Odesa guide, a guide to Odesa courtyards Denis Polishchuk in the article "The bright side of the stairs of the dead" on this occasion reports: "Is it true, or one of the many urban myths, historians are still arguing." And by the way, it adds light to this dark story. He tells how a "scary" staircase turned into a film set.
So, she "starred" in the film "Pages of the Past", 1957 "The Adventures of Petrov and Vasechkin, ordinary and incredible", 1983, "Primorsky Boulevard" 1988, the series "Liquidation", 2007.
Where can I find the Ladder of the Dead?
Ladder of the Dead is located in Odesa, between Deribasovskaya Street and Polski Descent.
The exact GPS coordinates are 46.483694, 30.745210
You can also save my map in Pinmapple.