ODESSA, UKRAINE—A monument to the French statesman the Duke of Richelieu stands in a prominent square at the top of a large staircase near Odessa’s waterfront. Scholars have long known that the ruins of a sixth-century b.c. ancient Greek colony lie hidden somewhere deep beneath the statue. However, Euromaidan Press reports that archaeologists were recently surprised to encounter remnants from an entirely different era nearby, under the Primorsky Boulevard. A team from the South Ukrainian National Pedagogical University and the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences uncovered materials and stone walls belonging to a long-lost Genoese fortress known as Ginestra. Dating to the fourteenth century, the structure likely would have served merchants and settlers from the Italian maritime Republic of Genoa, which established multiple settlements and trading posts around the Black Sea during its existence from the eleventh through the eighteenth century. The structure was eventually built over and replaced by the eighteenth-century Ottoman fortress of Khadjibey. “Now we know exactly what is literally located under the Duke,” said archaeologist Andriy Krasnozhen. For more on Ukrainian archaeology, go to "Ukraine's Lost Capital."
