Rov

Rov was a fortified trading settlement on the Riv River in Podolia, first recorded in 1401. Its later name, Bar, was bestowed by Queen Bona Sforza in 1537 in memory of her Italian home, Bari. The exposed town was fortified again in the seventeenth century by the French engineer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan.

During the Khmelnytsky uprising, Cossacks under Maksym Kryvonis captured and damaged the fortress in 1648. Bar then became a bone of contention between Poland and the Ottoman Empire, whose forces occupied it in 1672. In 1768 Polish nobles formed the Confederation of Bar at the fortress, opposing Russian influence and the king. Their alliance took its name from this frontier fortress. The second partition of Poland brought the town under Russian rule in 1793.