Odessa Archaeological Museum is the first museum in the Ukraine. It was founded in 1825 on the base of a private collection of antiquities belonging to Blaramberg. Since that time the museum collection has been considerably extended and now you can see there very interesting artifacts not only from the digging at the Greater Black Sea area, but also Egypt.
You should especially note the Egyptian Room of Odessa Archaeological Museum. The exposition of artifacts found during the excavations in Egypt was considered one of the most valuable in the former USSR, and was inferior only to the collections of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and Pushkin State Museum in Moscow. There you can see ancient sarcophagi, mummies, as well as religious objects and items of everyday life.
In the other rooms you can see the collections of findings dating to various periods. In the first two rooms you can see the artifacts covering the period from the prehistoric time to antiquity. As is know, on the Black Sea, including the area of today Odessa, there were many ancient Greek colonies, so there you can see artifacts found both in the ground and at the bottom of the sea.
It will be interesting to see the rooms with the artifacts from the time of the Scythian tribes, as well as the period of Kievan Rus. It will be mainly weapons and gold decorations that you can see there. Of course, as any other museum of such kind, Odessa Archaeological Museum has a large collection of coins. In front of the museum you can see the sculpture group of Laocoon fighting the snakes. It is a replica of the ancient Greek sculpture dating back to the I millennium B.C.
Odessa Archaeological Museum is at the heart of the Old Town. Deribasovskaya Street and Primorsky Boulevard come to it. Odessa Opera Theatre is also in the immediate vicinity of the museum.
