Vorontsov Palace, Odesa
Franz Boffo's palace of 1826–1834 above the port, standing without windows since May 2022.
The residence of Governor-General Mikhail Vorontsov was built in 1826–1834 by the architect Franz Boffo on the site of the Turkish fortress of Yeni-Dunya; it has porticoes of the Tuscan and Ionic orders, and the ceiling was painted by Ivan Kovsharov. During the Crimean War, in 1854, the palace was shelled — a cannonball still sits in a wall on the ground floor. Later it housed a boys' gymnasium and an acclimatisation society, and from 1936 the Palace of Pioneers; by the 2000s the building had almost collapsed, and restoration began in 2005. The belvedere colonnade consists of two parallel rows of ten-column porticoes above the slope. On 13 May 2022 the blast wave from a strike on the port blew out the windows and doors; in September 2023 the palace was damaged again, and since then the openings have been closed with panels and restoration has stopped.
2a Vorontsovskyi Lane; now the City Palace of Children's and Youth Creativity is here, so you can only get inside during working hours, while the colonnade is always open. Odesa is regularly attacked by drones: on 16.09.2026 jet-powered drones killed a person in the daytime (LB.ua, 16.09.2026). During an alert — straight to a shelter.