page_title: Constanța
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Constanța / History
context_page_description: Constanța, historically known as Tomis, is the oldest continuously inhabited city in Romania. It was founded around 600 BC. The city is located in the Northern Dobruja region of Romania, on the Black Sea coast. It is the capital of Constanța County and the largest city in the historical region of Dobruja.
  As of the 2011 census, Constanța has a population of 283,872, making it the fifth most populous city in Romania. The Constanța metropolitan area includes 14 localities within 30 km of the city, and with a total population of 425,916 inhabitants, it is one of the largest metropolitan areas in Romania.
  The Port of Constanța has an area of 39.26 km² and a length of about 30 km. It is the largest port on the Black Sea, and one of the largest ports in Europe.
context_section_description: According to Jordanes (after Cassiodorus), the foundation of the city was ascribed to Tomyris, the queen of the Massagetae (the origin and deeds of the Goths):
  "After achieving this victory (against Cyrus the Great) and winning so much booty from her enemies, Queen Tomyris crossed over into that part of Moesia which is now called Lesser Scythia - a name borrowed from Great Scythia -, and built on the Moesian shore of the Black Sea the city of Tomi, named after herself."
  In 29 BC, the Romans captured the region from the Odryses, and annexed it as far as the Danube, under the name of Limes Scythicus ("Scythian Frontier").
  In AD 8, the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC-17) was banished here by Augustus and it was where he spent the remaining eight years of his life. He laments his exile in Tomis in his poems: Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. Tomis was "by his account a town located in a war-stricken cultural wasteland on the remotest margins of the empire".
  A statue of Ovid stands in the Ovid Square (Piața Ovidiu) of Constanța, in front of the History Museum (the former City Hall).
  A number of inscriptions found in the city and its vicinity show that Constanța lies where Tomis once stood. Some of these are now preserved in the British Museum in London.
  The city was afterwards included in the Province of Moesia, and, from the time of Diocletian, in Scythia Minor, of which it was the metropolis. After the 5th century, Tomis fell under the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire. During Maurice's Balkan campaigns, Tomis was besieged by the Avars in the winter of 597/598.
  Tomis was later renamed to Constantiana in honour of Constantia, the half-sister of Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (274-337). The earliest known usage of this name was "Κωνστάντια" ("Constantia") in 950. The city lay at the seaward end of the Great Wall of Trajan, and has evidently been surrounded by fortifications of its own.
  After successively becoming part of the Bulgarian Empire for over 500 years, and later of the independent principality of Dobrotitsa/Dobrotici and of Wallachia under Mircea I of Wallachia, Constanța fell under the Ottoman rule around 1419.
  A railroad linking Constanța to Cernavodă was opened in 1860. In spite of damage done by railway contractors there are considerable remains of ancient masonry walls, pillars, etc. An impressive public building, thought to have originally been a port building, has been excavated, and contains the substantial remains of one of the longest mosaic pavements in the world.
  In 1878, after the Romanian War of Independence, Constanța and the rest of Northern Dobruja were ceded by the Ottoman Empire to Romania. The city became Romania's main seaport and transit point for much of Romania's exports.  The Constanța Casino, which is both a historic monument and a modern symbol of the city, was the first building constructed on the shore of the Black Sea after Dobruja came under Romanian administration, with the cornerstone being laid in 1880.
  On October 22, 1916 (during World War I), the Central Powers (German, Turkish and Bulgarian troops) occupied Constanța.  According to the Treaty of Bucharest of May 1918, article X.b. (a treaty never ratified by Romania), Constanța remained under the joint control of the Central Powers.  Allied troops liberated the city in 1918 after the successful offensive on the Macedonian front knocked Bulgaria out of the war.
  In the interwar years, the city became Romania's main commercial hub, so that by the 1930s over half of the national exports were going through the port. During World War II, when Romania joined the Axis powers, Constanța was one of the country's main targets for the Allied bombers. While the town was left relatively unscathed, the port suffered extensive damage, recovering only in the early 1950s.
caption: The port of Constanța in 1941
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