Odessa beauty: illusion or reality?

Well, so much for the history. What I noticed was, as I discovered later, a well known fact… At the moment, I had doubts as to whether or not the stairs was designed to create such an illusion, but it was the last thing I cared for at that moment. So much the better for me, since learning from reality was my favorite way of learning. As I descended, I kept looking down the stairs, but what made me feel a little dizzy was the fact that I could not see the steps. I could only see the landings. Walking up the stairway turned out to be truly breathtaking, and it was not just that now I could not see the landings and could only see the steps. Looking up made me feel like I would be panting for at least fifteen minutes after I reached the top – so long it looked to me… Eventually, I realized that it was surprise rather than the distance that made me breathe that hard… Had I developed so much endurance as to clear almost 200 steps that easy?.. Later in the evening, after looking through online ads about apartments in Odessa, I read that the top step measured 12,5 m, while the bottom one was 21,6 m wide, so the stairs looked much longer from the bottom than it actually was.