CONSTANTA

HISTORY

The old town Tomis founded 2 500 years ago, as part of Greek colonization in Pontus Euxinus attained great prosperity due the commercial exchange between Greek colonist and the native Gaeto-Dacians. 

From the 3^rd century a rapid progress took place in all field of activity and those explain why Tomis settlement was around 300 BC the battlefield of wars between the Macedonian king Lysimah and the Gaeto-Dacian king Dromihaites.

Tomis knew the greatest development under Roman domination. set up around 29 BC. (In the park close to Ferdinand Avenue the visitors can admire even today a great part of the ancient city and an out-door gallery with amphorae and columns.)

Tomis is known as the exile place of the Latin poet Publius Ovidius Naso, exiled from the Roman court by Octavian Augustus emperor. (between 9 - 17 AC) The city has kept a nice memory of this poet, highly adulated in Rome some time ago.

During the 2^nd century, Tomis became residence of the province taking pride in calling itself, the biggest metropolis of entire Pont. In the middle of the 3^rd century and the beginning of the 4^th century considerable efforts were made in order to restore the town. It was then when remarkable monuments were built: the Roman building with the mosaic, thermae, residential districts with paved streets, portals and sewers, underground galleries, etc. The wall of the precincts was built in the same period and was subsequently restored several times, the last time in the 6th century AC. 

Between the 4ht and the 6^th centuries AC the city became an archiepiscopal centre, fact proved by numerous Christian inscriptions and monuments. A very difficult period for the city was between the 6^th and the 7^th century AC when barbarians often attacked it. During the 6^th and even at the beginning of the 7^th century, Tomis was violently attacked by the Slavs and the Avars. In the 9th century the region is reorganized by the Byzantine Empire. The town is also found on medieval nautical maps as well as on the Genoa's sailors ones. 

Under Byzantine Empire domination the city was reorganized in the 9^th century BC. The history says that the emperor Constantin the Great has renamed Tomis as Constantia or Constanta as an honors paid to his sister.

The economical and cultural role during the Mircea cel Batran's reign is not perceptible, but during the ottoman domination, when called Kostendje, the significance of the town was minor. Town's lethargy continues until the 19th century, when some harbour arrangements were started and the railway Constanta-Cernavoda was layed out, crucial moment for further development of the town.

The Independence war (1877-1878) removed the Turkish yoke from the city, which regained the former name and became the residence of the region. An intense process of the town’s modernizing has begun: building of Bucharest - Cernavoda railway (1860), modernizing of the old maritime port (1896-1909) and building of the grain elevator (1899-1909), building of the bridge over the Danube river (1890-1895), all that turning Constanta in a main commercial hub and European port.

Constanta was seriously affected by the two World Wars, the town being reconstructed each time; after 1945 the rising advance continues and Constanta became one of the most developed towns in Romania. Nowadays Constanta is the biggest port in Romania, a powerful industrial commercial and touristic centre, a wide gate towards the world.