Odessa, a Black Sea port founded by Catherine the Great in 1794, shortly after the territory was wrested from the Ottoman Empire, became a boomtown on the southern fringe of the Russian Empire. Catherine and the early administrators of the city, such as the Duke de Richelieu, promoted settlement by Europeans in addition to the Greek, Italians, and Jews who came on their own initiative to take advantage of economic opportunities in the robust grain trade with Europe. More ethnically diverse by far than St. Petersburg, Odessa became a remarkable independent-minded, large cosmopolitan city, attracting and producing noted writers, artists, musicians and scholars.