Odessa's Potemkin Steps Built from Triestine Sandstone.

"In addition to its palaces, churches, hotels, shops, museums, library, and schools, the city built a monument that has since become its best-known symbol: the giant stairway now known as the Potemkin steps. This city on a hill needed direct access to the harbour below it. Winding paths and rude wooden stairs served until the decision was made in 1837 to construct a 'monstrous staircase'. Using sandstone from Trieste, the Russian architects A.I.Mel'nikov and Pot'e laid 220 stairs. A man by the name of Upton executed the project... Through Eisenstein's famous film of the 1920s, the 'Battleship Potemkin' the stairs were made familiar to movie-gores all over the world. Koch commented: 'A flight of steps unequalled in magnificence, leads down the declivity to the shore and harbour'"

( from Patrick Herlihy, Odessa: A History 1794-1914 p 140)

Herlihy does go on to note that the Trieste sandstone was gradually replaced by granite from the Boh region. G. Sperandeo claims that it was two Italian architects, Rossi and Toricelli, who designed the staircase.