Varna is among Europe's oldest cities. Miletians founded the apoikia (trading colony) of Odessos in 570 BCE (in the time of Astyages) within an earlier Thracian settlement. The name Odessos, first mentioned by Strabo, was pre-Greek, perhaps of Carian origin. Long before the Thracians populated the area (by 1200 BCE), several prehistoric settlements best known for the eneolithic necropolis, eponymous site of old European Varna culture and the world's oldest large find of gold artifacts (mid-5th millennium BCE radiocarbon dating), existed within the modern city limits. Odessos was a member of the Pontic Pentapolis and a mixed Greco-Thracian community—contact zone between the Ionians and the Thracians (Getae, Crobyzi, Terizi) of the hinterland (see also Darzalas).
In 339 BCE, the city was unsuccessfully besieged by Philip II but surrendered to Alexander the Great in 335 BC, and was later ruled by his diadochus Lysimachus. The Roman city, Odessus (first included into the Praefectura orae maritimae, then in 15 CE annexed to the province of Moesia, later Moesia Inferior), occupied 47 hectares in present-day central Varna and had prominent public baths, Thermae, erected in the late 2nd century, now the largest Roman remains in Bulgaria (the building was 100 m wide, 70 m long, and 25 m high) and fourth-largest known Roman baths in Europe.
Odessus was an early Christian centre, as testified by ruins of perhaps ten early basilicas [2], a monastery, and indications 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 442, a peace treaty between Theodosius II and Attila was done at Odessus. In 536, Justinian I made it the seat of the Quaestura exercitus including Moesia, Scythia, Caria, the Aegean Islands and Cyprus.
Theophanes the Confessor first mentioned the name Varna, as the city came to be known with the Slavic conquest of the Balkans in the 6th-7th century. The name may be older than that; perhaps it derives from Proto-Indo-European root we-r- (water) [3] (see also Varuna). In 681, Asparukh, the founder of the First Bulgarian Empire, routed an army of Constantine IV north of the Danube delta and reached the so-called Varna near Odessos. Recent scholarship has suggested that the first Bulgarian capital was perhaps located around Varna before it moved to Pliska. Asparukh fortified the Varna river lowland by a rampart against a possible Byzantine naval landing; several 7th-century Bulgar settlements have been excavated.
Middle Ages
Control changed from Byzantine to Bulgarian hands several times during the Middle Ages. In the late 9th and the 10th century, Varna was the site of a principal scriptorium of the Preslav Literary School in a monastery founded by Boris I who may have used it as his monastic retreat. In 1201, Kaloyan took over the fortress on Holy Saturday using a siege tower, and secured it for the Second Bulgarian Empire.
By the late 13th and 14th century, it had turned into a thriving commercial hub frequented by Genoese, Venetian and Ragusan merchant ships (the three republics held consulates and had expatriate colonies there) and flanked by two fortresses with smaller ports of their own, Kastritsi and Galata, within sight of each other. Wheat and other local agricultural produce for the Italian and Constantinople markets were the chief exports, and Mediterranean foods and luxury items were imported. Shipbuilding developed in the Kamchiya river mouth.
14th-century Italian portolan charts showed Varna as perhaps the most important seaport between Constantinople and the Danube delta; they usually labeled the region Zagora. The city was unsuccessfully besieged by Amadeus VI of Savoy in 1366; in 1386, it 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 Palaiologos in 1413 (perhaps until 1444), and sacked by Tatars in 1414.
Battle of Varna
On November 10, 1444, one of the last major battles of the Crusades in European history was fought outside the city walls. The Turks routed an army of 20,000 crusaders[6] led by Ladislaus III of Poland (also Ulászló I of Hungary), which had assembled at the port to set sail 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 attempt 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 remain under Ottoman domination for over four centuries. Today, there is a cenotaph of Ladislaus III in Varna.
Late Ottoman rule
Varna was 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, following the prolonged Siege of Varna, returning it to the Ottomans two years later after the medieval fortress was razed. 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 mark 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 Istanbul 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 Istanbul and a busy hub for European imports to the capital; 12 foreign consulates opened in the city.
Liberated Bulgaria
With the national liberation in 1878, the city, which numbered 25-26 thousand inhabitants, was ceded to Bulgaria by the Treaty of Berlin; Russian troops entered on July 27. Varna became a front city in the First Balkan War and the First World War; its economy was badly affected by the temporary loss 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.
Over the first decades after the 1878 liberation, with the departure of most ethnic Turks and Greeks and the arrival of Bulgarians from inland, Northern Dobruja, Bessarabia, and Asia Minor, and later, of refugees from Macedonia, Eastern Thrace and Southern Dobruja following the Second Balkan War and the First World War, ethnic diversity gave way to Bulgarian predominance, although sizeable minorities of Gagauz, Armenians, and Sephardic Jews remained for decades.
One of the early centres of industrial development and the Bulgarian labor movement, Varna established itself as the nation's principal port of export, a major grain producing and viticulture centre, seat of the nation's oldest institution of higher learning outside Sofia, a popular venue for international festivals and events, as well as the country's de facto summer capital with the erection of the Euxinograd royal summer palace (currently, the Bulgarian government convenes summer sesions there). Mass tourism emerged since the late 1950s. Heavy industry and trade with the Soviet Union boomed in the 1950s to the 1970s.
In 1962, the 15th Chess Olympiad, also known as the World Team Championship, was here. In 1969 and 1987, Varna was the host of the World Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships. From September 30 to October 4, 1973, the 10th Olympic Congress took place in the Sports Palace.
Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varna
