Odesa Historical and Local History Museum

"Steppe Ukraine" Museum Odesa

The "Steppe Ukraine" Museum was established in 2006 as the ethnographic department of the Odesa Regional Historical and Local Lore Museum. It is located in the central part of Odesa, in a building that is an architectural monument from the mid-19th century. Its exposition is multi-layered. Through life and household complexes, it reveals the world of Ukrainian and Moldovan peasants, Greek, Jewish, and Karaite urban communities, settlements of Old Believers and Gagauz people, as well as Bulgarian and German colonists, to the curious visitor. Representatives of these ethnic and ethnographic groups form the core population of this multinational region. Their culture is presented in complexes centered around national costume. Furniture, crockery, carpets, art pieces, musical instruments, and other household items create the interiors of the dwellings. Art ceramics, collections of toys, pysanky (painted eggs), embroidered shirts, rushnyky (embroidered towels), and agricultural tools are shown separately.

Authentic museum artifacts were used to create the exposition that reflects the material and spiritual culture of the Germans of the Black Sea region. These objects are an integral part of the museum's German historical and ethnographic collection. The most powerful impetus that drove the purposeful collecting and in-house museum research was expeditions to the former German colonies of the Black Sea region. Subsequently, acquisitions from private individuals were added. Currently, the German collection of the Odesa Historical and Local Lore Museum numbers about 700 storage units.