Târgoviște

Târgoviște rose on the Ialomița river where the Wallachian plain meets the Carpathian foothills, a market town with a Saxon quarter around its stronghold and a Romanian part beside it. A German crusader who passed through in 1396 named it one of the two main towns of Wallachia, and under Mircea the Elder it became the princes' chief residence; from 1431 the court stayed here for good. Its townsmen traded with Poland, Brașov and Sibiu.

Târgoviște lay in the way of every invasion. Bayezid I burned it in 1395, and in 1457 Vlad III Dracula punished the townsmen over the murder of his brother, killing the elite and sending the young to build Poenari Castle. In 1462 his night attack on Mehmed II's camp near the town stopped the Ottoman march; the Chindia Tower dates from his reign. In 1508 the monk Macarie printed the first books in Wallachia here. In October 1595 Michael the Brave and Hungarian troops freed the town from the Ottomans who had held it under Sinan Pasha. Constantin Brâncoveanu kept his summer court here and his winter court in Bucharest; after the sultan deposed him in 1714 the capital moved to Bucharest, and Târgoviște declined.