There are also three recent monuments on the Gorsad border with Deribasovska street. One of them is a very particular monument which is dedicated to one literature "hero". Odessa famous humorist writers Ilf and Petrov have written a couple of novels very popular in all ex-USSR and they are about Odessa. There was several films made of it and everybody knows the plot of the best of the novels (by its humour) "Twelve chairs" where OstapBender, the hero of both novels and ingenious Odessa trickster with a "gang" (actually people only trying to be tricksters), is searching for diamonds that some duchess have put under the facing of one of her 12 chairs suit before running away abroad after Revolution. The suit is put apart, so they have to look for every chair. And they actually don't find it because they could track only 11 chairs which were all wrong chairs. And the end is that some night waiter stand in a museum to change lamps on that last chair, the facing cracks and he finds those diamonds. So� the hero of the monument on Deribasovska street is the golden chair! Everybody in ex-USSR, as it was stated, knows that "hero" and it is a humorist monument. The chair is on a pedestal, but it's not too high and there is also a queue always to take pictures sitting on that chair. A little bit further you can see a monument to Utesov, a famous Odessa jazz singer and songwriter. He sits on the bench and there is place to sit down beside him and take a picture together. In front of that monument they have made a music machine which would play an Utesovsong of your choice through speakers. The newest monument opened in september 2001 on the City Day is Utochkin, who stands on the stairs of Utochkino cinema with a paper plane in hand, ready to throw him in the air and looking upside thoughtfully. This monument is to one of the first aviator who was born in Odessa and bears a tablet "To the young aeronaut and dreamer..." |  Monument to Utesov |