History of Constanta

According to Jordanes (after Cassiodorus), the foundation of the city was ascribed to
Tomyris the queen of the Getae (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.
In AD 8, the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC-17) was banished here by Augustus, where he
found his death eight years later. 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".

Statue of Ovid in front of the Museum of National History

A statue of Ovid stands in the Ovid Square (Piaa Ovidiu) of Constana, in front of the
History Museum (the former City Hall).
A number of inscriptions found in the city and its vicinity show that Constana 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
"" ("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, Constana fell under the
Ottoman rule around 1419.
A railroad linking Constana to Cernavod 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, Constana 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.
On October 22, 1916 (during World War I), the Central Powers (German, Turkish and
Bulgarian troops) occupied Constana. According to the Treaty of Bucharest in May 1918, article
10.b (a treaty never ratified by Romania), Constana remained under the joint control of the
Central Powers. Allied troops liberated the city in 1918 after the successful offensive on the
Thessaloniki 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, Constana was one of the country's main targets for the Allied
bombers. While the town was left relatively undamaged, the port suffered extensive damage,
recovering only in the early 1950s.