Historical Perspectives of Migration and Urbanization in Europe
Journal: IMISCOE research series
Year: 2026

The above passage is part of a detailed description of the Black Sea port of Odessa written by the German travel writer Johann Georg Kohl. In 1838, the year of Kohl’s visit, Odessa had around 70,000 inhabitants. Street signs, Kohl tells us, were written in Russian, the national language, and Italian, the city’s commercial lingua franca.