Over 1500 years ago, an ancient Greek colony settled near the place where later the city was founded.  The Crimean Tartars traded in the Odessa region In the 14th Century.  It was   during the Russo-Turkish War, from 1787-1791, that the Ukrainian Black Sea Cossaks conquered the Tartar settlement of Khadzhibei and the Turkish fortress of Eni-Dunai, which was located near the city's present-day location.  The city was officially founded in 1794 as a Russian naval fortress on lands annexed from Turkey during the Treaty of Jassy in 1792.  The city was named after an ancient Greek colony Odessos, and in 1795 Queen Catherine II's had the name changed to a feminine gender, thus Odessa.  Because of his service in the Russian Army against the Turks, a French politician, Duke de Richelieu, was nominated governor of Odessa, from 1803-1814. He is considered one of the founding fathers of Odessa because of his efforts to promote the integrity and wellness of the city.  For a period of time, 1823-1824, the poet, Alexander Pushkin, lived and wrote in Odessa.  British and French naval forces bombarded Odessa during the Crimean War. 

As trade grew, so did Odessa and she became the largest grain-exporting port for Russia.  In 1866, the city was linked by rail with Kiev and Kharkov as well as Jassy, Romania.  In 1905, Odessa was the site of a workers' revolution, supported by the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin and Lenin's Iskra.  Following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 during World War I, Odessa was occupied by several groups, including the Central Powers, the French, the Red Army and the White Army.  Then, in 1920, the Communists took control of Odessa and united her with the Ukrainian SSR, later becoming part of the USSR.  From 1921-1922, the inhabitants suffered from a great famine that occurred as a result of the War.