Drastar

Drastar stands on the southern bank of the lower Danube in Dobruja. The Romans built Durostorum here on the site of an earlier Thracian settlement, and the Eleventh Claudian Legion made it a stronghold of the Moesian frontier. Baths and houses grew around the fortress, and the city became an important Christian bishopric. As Drastar, it later formed part of the Bulgarian Empire and guarded the great river's southern bank.

Bulgarian and Byzantine rulers fought repeatedly for the city; in 1279 the Bulgarian emperor Ivaylo withstood a Mongol siege here. The Ottomans conquered Drastar around 1400 and made Silistra, as they called it, a centre of provincial government. A register of 1570 counted Muslim and Christian neighbourhoods as well as Jewish and Christian Romani communities. Its fortifications remained important during later wars between the Ottoman and Russian empires.