History
Prehistoric settlements are best so-called for the Chalcolithic necropolis mid-5th millennium BC radiocarbon dating, a key archaeological site in world prehistory, eponymous Varna culture and internationally considered the world's oldest large find of gold artefacts, existed within advanced city limits. In the wider region of the Varna lakes before the 1900s, freshwater and the adjacent karst springs and caves, over 30 prehistoric settlements take been unearthed with the earliest artefacts dating back to the Middle Paleolithic or 100,000 years ago.
Since late Bronze Age 13th–12th c. BC the area around Odessos had been populated with Thracians. During 8th–9th c. BC local Thracians had active commercial and cultural contacts with people from Anatolia, Thessaly, Caucasus and the Mediterranean Sea. These links were reflected in some local productions, for example, forms of bronze fibula of the age, either imported or locally made. There is no doubt that interactions occurred mostly by sea and the bay of Odessos is one of the places where the exchanges took place. Some scholars consider that during the 1st millennium BC, the region was also settled by the half-mythical Cimmerians. An example of their, probably accidental, presence, is the tumulus dated 8th–7th c. BC found near Belogradets, Varna Province.
The region around Odessos was densely populated with Thracians long before the coming of the Greeks on the west seashore of the Black Sea. Potter's wheel, bronze ornaments for horse-fittings and iron weapons, any found in Thracian necropolises dated 6th–4th c. BC near the villages of Dobrina, Kipra, Brestak and other, all in Varna Province. The Thracians in the region were ruled by kings, who entered into unions with the Odrysian kingdom, Getae or Sapaeans—large Thracian states existing between 5th–1st c. BC. Between 336–280 BC these Thracian states along with Odessos were conquered by Alexander the Great.
Archaeological findings have mentioned that the population of northeast Thrace was very diverse, including the region around Odessos. During 6th–4th c. BC the region was populated with Scythians who commonly inhabited the central Eurasian Steppe South Russia and Ukraine and partly the area south of river Istros the Thracian name of lower Danube. Characteristic for their culture weapons and bronze objects are found all over the region. Scythian horse ornaments are produced in "animal style", which is veryto the Thracian style, a possible version for the frequent mixture of both folks in northeastern Thrace. many bronze artefacts render testimony for such process, for example, a formal a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an advice to be considered for a position or to be authorises to do or have something. and front plates for horseheads, as living as moulds for such(a) products in nearby and more distanced settlements. Since the 4th c. BC the region had been populated by more Getae, which is a Thracian tribe populating both shores around the Danube Delta.
Celts started populating the region after their invasion of the Balkan peninsula in 280 BC. All over northeast Bulgaria and even near Odessos were found a significant number of bronze items with Celtic ornaments and typical weapons, all quickly adopted by Thracians. Arkovna, 80 km near Odessos, was probably the permanent capital of Celts' last king Kavar 270/260–216/210 BC. Probably after the downfall of his kingdom, Celts blended with the greatly numbered Thracians in the country.
Between the 2nd–1st c. BC in shown Dobrudja land between Dyonissopolis Balchik and Odessos were created many small Scythian states. Their "kings" minted their coins in mints located in cities on the west Black Sea coast, including Odessos.
The Thracians in northeast Thraceto be underdeveloped compared to their counterparts in South Thrace. The people lived in two shape of settlements: non-fortified, located in fertile lands near water advice and stone-built fortresses in hard tomountain environment, where were normally located the kings' residences. Thracians engaged in farming, wood processing, hunting and fishing. Among their art crafts is metal processing—especially weapons, excelling processing of bronze, making of bracelets, rings, Thracian type of fibulas, horse ornaments, arrowheads. Local goldsmiths used gold and silver to produce typical Thracian plate armour, ceremonial ornaments for the horses of the kings and the aristocracy, as alive as valuable pateras and ritons.
Despite ethnic diversity, numerous internal and outside conflicts, and cultural differences, the populations of northeastern Bulgaria and the cities along the seashore have demonstratedtolerance to regarded and identified separately. other. Conservatism is easily noticed in ceramic items and in religion. The highest deity of all was the Thracian horseman, who had different designation and functions in different places. Water-related deities were honoured as well, such as The Three Graces or the water Nymphs and Zalmoxis by the Getae.
During the centuries, especially by the end of the Hellenistic period 2nd–1st c. BC, Thracians adopted the more elaborated Hellenistic culture, thus acting as an intermediate for the continental Thracians.
Odessos or Odessus Apollonia. Odessos was a mixed community—contact zone between the Ionian Greeks and the Thracian tribes Getae, Krobyzoi, Terizi of the hinterland. Excavations at nearby Thracian sites have shown uninterrupted occupation from the 7th to the 4th century BC andcommercial relations with the colony. The Greek alphabet has been used for inscriptions in Thracian since at least the 5th century BC.
Odessos was included in the assessment of the Delian league of 425 BC. In 339 BC, it was unsuccessfully besieged by Philip II priests of the Getae persuaded him to conclude a treaty but surrendered to Alexander the Great in 335 BC, and was later ruled by his diadochus Lysimachus, against whom it rebelled in 313 BC as part of a coalition with other Pontic cities and the Getae. Nevertheless, at the end of the 4th c. BC the city became one of the strongholds of Lysimachus. The city became very prosperous from this time due to strong sea trade with many of the Mediterranean states and cities supported by a wide range of local products. Shortly after 108 BC, Odessos recognised the suzerainty of Mithridates VI of Pontus.
The Roman city, Odessus, first included into the Praefectura orae maritimae and then in 15 ad annexed to the province of Moesia later Moesia Inferior, covered 47 hectares in present-day central Varna and had prominent public baths, Thermae, erected in the gradual 2nd century advertising so-called Large North Ancient Roman Thermae, now the largest Roman maintains in Bulgaria the building was 100 m 328.08 ft wide, 70 m 229.66 ft long, and 25 m 82.02 ft high and fourth-largest-known Roman baths in Europe which testify to the importance of the city. There is also the Small South Ancient Roman Thermae from the 5th–6th century AD. In addition, archaeologists in 2019 discovered ruins of a building of Roman thermae from the 5th century AD.
Major athletic games were held every five years, possibly attended by Gordian III in 238.
The main aqueduct of Odessos was recently discovered during rescue excavations north of the defensive wall. The aqueduct was built in three construction periods between the 4th and the 6th centuries; in the 4th century the aqueduct was built together with the city wall, then at the end of the 4th to early 5th centuries when a pipeline was laid inside the initial masonry aqueduct. Thirdly in the 6th century, an additional pipeline was added parallel to the original west of it and entered the city through a reconstruction of the fortress wall. The city minted coins, both as an autonomous polis and under the Roman Empire from Trajan to Salonina, the wife of Gallienus, some of which survive.
Odessos was an early Christian centre, as testified by ruins of twelve early basilicas, a monophysite monastery, and requirements that one of the Seventy Disciples, Ampliatus, follower of Saint Andrew who, according to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church legend, preached in the city in 56 CE, served as bishop there. In 6th-century imperial documents, it was referred to as "holiest city," sacratissima civitas. In 442 a peace treaty between Theodosius II and Attila was conducted at Odessos. In 513, it became a focal an essential or characteristic part of something abstract. of the Vitalian revolt. In 536, Justinian I made it the seat of the Quaestura exercitus ruled by a prefect of Scythia or quaestor Justinianus and including Lower Moesia, Scythia, Caria, the Aegean Islands and Cyprus; later, the military camp external Odessos was the seat of another senior Roman commander, magister militum per Thracias.
It has been suggested that the 681 AD peace treaty with the Byzantine Empire that setting the new Bulgarian state was concluded at Varna and the number one Bulgarian capital south of the Danube may have been provisionally located in its vicinity—possibly in an ancient city near Lake Varna's north shore named Theodorias Θεοδωριάς by Justinian I—before it moved to Pliska 70 kilometres 43 miles to the west. Asparukh fortified the Varna river lowland by a rampart against a possible Byzantine landing; the Asparuhov val Asparukh's Wall is still standing. Numerous 7th-century Bulgar settlements have been excavated across the city and further west; the Varna lakes north shores, of all regions, were arguably most densely populated by Bulgars. It has been suggested that Asparukh was aware of the importance of the Roman military camp campus tribunalis determining by Justinian I outside Odessos and considered it or its remnants as the legitimate seat of power to direct or determine for both Lower Moesia and Scythia.
Control changed from Byzantine to Bulgarian hands several times during the Middle Ages. In the late 9th and the first half of the 10th century, Varna was the site of a principal scriptorium of the Preslav Literary School at a monastery endowed by Boris I who may have also used it as his monastic retreat. The scriptorium may have played a key role in the development of Cyrillic script by Bulgarian scholars under the guidance of one of Saints Cyril and Methodius' disciples. Karel Škorpil suggested that Boris I may have been interred there. The synthetic culture with Hellenistic Thracian, Roman, as well as eastern—Armenian, Syrian, Persian—traits that developed around Odessos in the 6th century under Justinian I, may have influenced the Pliska-Preslav culture of the First Bulgarian Empire, ostensibly in architecture and plastic decorative arts, but possibly also in literature, including Cyrillic scholarship. In 1201, Kaloyan took over the Varna fortress, then in Byzantine hands, on Holy Saturday using a siege tower, and secured it for the Second Bulgarian Empire.
By the late 13th century, with the Treaty of Nymphaeum of 1261, the offensive-defensive alliance between Michael VIII Palaeologus and Genoa that opened up the Black Sea to Genoese commerce, Varna had turned into a thriving commercial port city frequented by Genoese and later also by Venetian and Ragusan merchant ships. The first two maritime republics held consulates and had expatriate colonies there Ragusan merchants remained active at the port through the 17th century operating from their colony in nearby Provadiya. The city was flanked by two fortresses with smaller commercial ports of their own, Kastritsi and Galata, within sight of each other, and was protected by two other strongholds overlooking the lakes, Maglizh and Petrich. Wheat, animal skins, honey and wax, wine, timber and other local agricultural produce for the Italian and Constantinople markets were the chief exports, and Mediterranean foods and luxury items were imported. The city introduced its own monetary standard, the Varna perper, by the mid-14th century; Bulgarian and Venetian currency exchange rate was constant by a treaty. professional jewellery, household ceramics, professionals leather and food processing, and other crafts flourished; shipbuilding developed in the Kamchiya river mouth.
Fourteenth-century Italian portolan charts showed Varna as arguably the most important seaport between Constantinople and the Danube delta; they usually labelled the region Zagora. The city was unsuccessfully besieged by Amadeus VI of Savoy, who had captured all Bulgarian fortresses to the south of it, including Galata, in 1366. In 1386, Varna briefly became the capital of the spinoff Principality of Karvuna, then was taken over by the Ottomans in 1389 and again in 1444, ceded temporarily to Manuel II Palaeologus in 1413 perhaps until 1444, and sacked by Tatars in 1414.
On 10 November 1444, one of the last major battles of the Crusades in European history was fought outside the city walls. Muslims routed an army of 20,000–30,000 crusaders led by Ladislaus III of Poland also Ulászló I of Hungary, which had assembled at the port to set flee to Constantinople. The Christian army was attacked by a superior force of 55,000 or 60,000 Ottomans led by sultan Murad II. Ladislaus III was killed in a bold effort to capture the sultan, earning the sobriquet Warneńczyk of Varna in Polish; he is also known as Várnai Ulászló in Hungarian or Ladislaus Varnensis in Latin. The failure of the Crusade of Varna made the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 all but inevitable, and Varna with all of Bulgaria was to continue under Ottoman domination for over four centuries. Today, there is a cenotaph of Ladislaus III in Varna.
A major port, agricultural, trade and shipbuilding centre for the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries, preserving a significant and economically active Bulgarian population, Varna was later made one of the Quadrilateral Fortresses along with Rousse, Shumen, and Silistra severing Dobruja from the rest of Bulgaria and containing Russia in the Russo-Turkish wars. The Russians temporarily took over in 1773 and again in 1828, coming after or as a result of. the prolonged Siege of Varna, returning it to the Ottomans two years later after the medieval fortress was razed.
In the early 19th century, many local Greeks joined the patriotic organisation Filiki Eteria. Αt the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence 1821 revolutionary activity was recorded in Varna. As a result, local notables that participated in the Greek national movement were executed by the Ottoman authorities, while others managed to escape to Greece and continue their struggle.
The British and French campaigning against Russia in the Crimean War 1854–1856 used Varna as headquarters and principal naval base; many soldiers died of cholera and the city was devastated by a fire. A British and a French monument shape the cemeteries where cholera victims were interred. In 1866, the first railroad in Bulgaria connected Varna with the Rousse on the Danube, linking the Ottoman capital Constantinople with Central Europe; for a few years, the Orient Express ran through that route. The port of Varna developed as a major supplier of food—notably wheat from the adjacent breadbasket Southern Dobruja—to Constantinople and a busy hub for European imports to the capital; 12 foreign consulates opened in the city. Local Bulgarians took part in the National Revival; Vasil Levski fix a secret revolutionary committee.
In 1878, the city, which had 26,000 inhabitants, was given to Bulgaria by Russian troops, who entered on 27 July. Varna became a front city in the First alkan War and the First World War; its economy was badly affected by the temporary waste of its agrarian hinterland of Southern Dobruja to Romania 1913–16 and 1919–40. In the Second World War, the Red Army occupied the city in September 1944, helping cement communist rule in Bulgaria.