In Odesa, new names have appeared on the twin cities sign

The memorial sign of Odesa's sister cities and partner cities has been replenished with the names of three more cities - two European and one African.

The names of Mainz, Heidelberg, and Taita-Taveta were added to the sign. The unveiling of the new names took place on September 2.

Mainz is a city in Germany, the capital of the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate. It is widely known as the birthplace of the European first printer Johannes Gutenberg. The city's population is 217 thousand people.

Heidelberg is a city in Germany, in the northwest of Baden-Württemberg. Near Heidelberg in the Mauer commune in 1907, Otto Schetensack (1850-1912) discovered the oldest bone remains in Europe (the lower jaw) of a man (Heidelberg man) who lived here half a million years ago and may be a descendant of a pithecanthrope. The population is 158 thousand people.

The name of the city of Taveta, which is located in the Taita-Taveta County in Kenya, also appeared. As of 2019, the city's population numbered 22 thousand people.

Before that, the list of Odesa's sister cities included 22 names: Yerevan (Armenia), Alexandria (Egypt), Baltimore (USA), Vancouver (Canada), Varna (Bulgaria), Genoa (Italy), Yokohama (Japan), Chisinau (Moldova), Kolkata (India), Constanta (Romania), Liverpool (UK), Lodz (Poland), Marseille (France), Nicosia (Cyprus), Oulu (Finland), Piraeus (Greece), Regensburg (Germany), Szeged (Hungary), Split (Croatia), Istanbul (Turkey), Haifa (Israel), Qingdao (China).

Every year on September 2, Odesa celebrates the City Day. This date is as controversial as the age of the city itself. Officially, Odesa turned 228 years old in 2022, but there is an opinion that the date of the city's foundation should be measured from the first mention of the Khadzhibey fortress, where the city stands. Then Odesa would be over 600 years old, and the date of its foundation would have to be changed.

In July 2025, archaeologists conducting excavations on Prymorskyi Boulevard in the center of Odesa compared their findings with archival documents and concluded that they had identified the location of the Khadzhibey Castle.

Кирило Бойко