Soroca

Soroca lay at a ford of the Dniester on the road between the Carpathians and the Black Sea steppe. In 1337 the district was pasture of the Golden Horde.

Moldavia reached the river in the late fourteenth century. In 1499 Ștefan the Great built a fort to guard the crossing, around which Soroca grew. Petru Rareș replaced it with a circular stone citadel in 1543–1546. Polish troops held it against the Ottomans during the Great Turkish War; it figured in Peter the Great's Prut campaign in 1711.