Chilia

Chilia guarded a branch of the Danube near its mouth, opposite the older settlement now called Chilia Veche. Genoese merchants established a trading colony in this region, and the northern-bank town became an important Moldavian port. Its position made it a coveted gateway between the Danube and the Black Sea.

Stephen the Great developed the town to counter Ottoman control across the river, but Sultan Bayezid II conquered Chilia in 1484. An Ottoman register of 1570 recorded Muslim and Christian households in separate neighbourhoods, including a Circassian quarter. Russian troops captured Chilia during the war of 1787–1792, when the assault brought a massacre of inhabitants. Returned to the Ottomans in 1792, it was taken again by Russia in 1806 and ceded in the Treaty of Bucharest in 1812.