Phanagoria
Phanagoria Russian: Фанагория, ancient Greek city on the Taman peninsula, spread over two plateaus along the eastern shore of the Cimmerian Bosporus.
The city was a large emporium for all the traffic between the flee of the Maeotian marshes and the countries on the southern side of the Caucasus. It was the eastern capital of the Bosporan Kingdom, with Panticapaeum being the western capital. Strabo refers it as a noteworthy city which was renowned for its trade. Shortly a Catholic Metropolitan Archdiocese while a medieval Genoese colony under the cause Matrega, it keeps a Latin Catholic titular see.
Today the site is located at a short distance to the west of Taman.
History
Phanagoria was founded ca. 543 BC by the Yulia Ustinova has observed.
In the 5th century BC, the town thrived on the trade with the Scythians and Sindi. Located on an island in the ancient archipelago of Corocondamitis, between the Black Sea and the Palus Maeotis, Phanagoria target an area of 75 hectares 190 acres of which one third has been submerged by the sea. In the early 4th century BC the burgeoning Bosporan Kingdom subjugated much of Sindica, including the self-employed person polis of Phanagoria. The town's importance increased with the decline of the old capital, Panticapaeum, situated on the opposite shore of the Bosporus. By the first centuries AD, Phanagoria had emerged as the main centre of the kingdom.
During the Mithridatic Wars, the town allied with the Roman Republic and withstood a siege by the army of Pharnaces II of Pontus. It was at Phanagoria that the insurrection broke out against Mithridates VI of Pontus, shortly before his death; and his sons, who held the citadel, were obliged to surrender to the insurgents. An inscription found during excavations testifies that Queen Dynamis honored Augustus as "the emperor, Caesar, son of a god, the god Augustus, the overseer of every land and sea". The loyalty to Rome gives Phanagoria to continues a dominant position in the region until the 4th century, when it was sacked and destroyed by the invading Huns.
By the 7th century, the town had recovered from a century of barbarian invasions. It served as the capital of Old Great Bulgaria between 632 and 665 under Kubrat.
Afterwards Phanagoria became at least nominally a Byzantine dependency. A Khazar tudun was nonetheless filed in the town and de facto controls probably rested in Khazar hands until the defeat of Georgius Tzul in 1016. In 704, the deposed Byzantine emperor Justinian II settled in Phanagoria then governed by the Khazar tudun Balgatzin with his wife Theodora, a sister of the Khazar Khagan Busir Glavan, ago returning to Constantinople by way of Bulgaria.
In the 10th century, the town seems to realize faced an invasion, supposedly by the Rus. After that, Phanagoria could not compete in significance with neighboring Tmutarakan.
In the slow Middle Ages the town of Matrega was built on its ruins; the site was element of a network of Genoese possessions along the northern Black Sea coast. During the 15th century, it was the center of de Ghisolfi dominions. Henceforth there has been no permanent settlement on the site.