Cernǎuți

Cernăuți, called Czernowitz under Habsburg rule, stands on the upper Prut River and lies in the Moldavian lands first mentioned in a document issued by Alexander the Good on 8 October 1408. A fortified settlement on the river's left bank dated from the time of the Principality of Halych and was destroyed by the Mongol commander Boroldai in 1259, though its ramparts were still used for defence and received several bastions in the seventeenth century. Later settlement moved to the higher right bank, where a fort named Țețina guarded the ford of the Prut in 1325.

From 1359 the town belonged to the Principality of Moldavia and was the seat of its own county. Moldavia came under Polish and then Ottoman suzerainty while remaining formally Moldavian until 1774, when Austria took Bukovina after the Russo-Turkish War. The Habsburgs made Czernowitz the centre of Bukovina, invited merchants and craftsmen to settle, and drew Romanian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish and German communities to its markets and fairs.