Cetatea Albǎ

Cetatea Albă, the White Fortress, stands overlooking and commands the western shore of the Dniester estuary and the approach to the Black Sea. Greek colonists founded Tyras here in antiquity; later the port was known to Genoese merchants as Moncastro and to the Ottomans as Akkerman. Its great walls and towers protected a meeting place of river and sea trade, and under Moldavian rule it became one of the principality's chief ports and fortresses.

In 1420 Alexander the Good defended the citadel against an Ottoman attack. In the fifteenth century merchants and travellers passed through its harbour on journeys between central Europe and Constantinople. In 1484 Sultan Bayezid II captured Cetatea Albă and Chilia, depriving Moldavia of its principal Black Sea outlets. The fortress became an Ottoman stronghold on the northern shore, while its port remained a point of exchange between the hinterland and the sea.

Russian armies took Akkerman during wars with the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Treaty of Bucharest in 1812 ceded it with Bessarabia to Russia. In 1826 Russian and Ottoman representatives signed the Akkerman Convention here, settling a number of longstanding disputes between the two neighbouring empires. The many names borne by the city reflect the successive peoples and rulers drawn to the Dniester mouth.