Decagonal Roman Fortress Tower from Ancient Bononia Unearthed in Bulgaria’s Danube City Vidin
An
aerial shot of the half uncovered ruins of the decagonal fortress tower
from the Ancient Roman city of Bononia in Bulgaria’s Vidin, which stood
before a 4-meter thick fortress wall. Photo: TV grab from BNT
The ruins of a decagonal fortress tower from the Ancient Roman
city of Bononia – said to be the largest Roman fortress on the Lower
Danube – have been uncovered by archaeologists in the city of Vidin in
Northwest Bulgaria.
The
newly exposed structure from ancient Bononia is the first decagonal
fortress tower from any historical period to have been discovered in
Bulgaria which boasts a rich archaeological heritage with thousands of
fortresses and fortified settlements from the Prehistory, Antiquity, and
Middle Ages.
With
a fortified territory of some 200 decares (appr. 50 acres) Bononia is
believed to have been the largest Roman fortress on the Lower Danube,
the so called Limes Moesiae, the frontier region where the Roman Empire
built a system of fortifications designed to stop barbarian attacks from
the north and east.
The
archaeological site where the decagonal tower, i.e. a tower with ten
sides and ten corners, has been discovered is located within the Danube
city of Vidin.
The
Roman ruins there were first stumbled upon by accident 30 years, in the
late 1980s, during the construction of an apartment building.
Roman
ruins from the site of newly unearthed decagonal Roman fortress tower
in the Danube city of Vidin were first found by accident in the 1980s.
Photos: TV grabs from BNT
Bulgarian
archaeologists have now resumed the field research of the Ancient Roman
city of Bononia, a vast Danubian fortress, regardless of the total lack
of government funding for their excavations.
2018 is by far not the first year when Bulgaria’s Culture Ministry has provided no money for the research of Bononia.
In
addition to the first ever decagonal fortress tower in Bulgaria, they
have also unearthed a section of the impressive fortress wall of ancient
Bononia, and have found it to have been 4 meters wide.
“In
front of the fortress wall we have exposed an fortress tower with a
decagonal shape, the first of its kind to have been excavated in
Bulgaria. What is more, the level of preservation of the archaeological
structures here is very good,” explains lead archaeologist Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zdravko Dimitrov from the National Institute and Museum of Archaeology.
The
fact that the ruins of ancient Bononia have remained underneath the
modern-day city of Vidin has rescued them from destruction by Bulgaria’s numerous ruthless treasure hunters.
Unlike Bononia, the ruins of another major Ancient Roman city on the Danube, Ratiaria,
for example, located just 20 kilometers east of Vidin, have been
utterly demolished by the looters using bulldozers, excavators,
tractors, and diggers.
“[In
the ruins of Bononia] here we found absolutely all archaeological
layers – from the Ottoman Era (Late Middle Ages) to the Middle Ages and
the time of the Vidin Tsardom (a rump state of the Second Bulgarian Empire, with Vidin as its capital
– editor’s note), and the Late Antiquity from the 4th till the 6th
century AD, with a huge number of finds in all of these layers,”
Dimitrov has told BNT.
Some
of the archaeological artifacts found during the excavations of the
decagonal fortress tower from ancient Bononia. Photos: TV grabs from BNT
The
Bulgarian archaeologists are hoping to be able to study, restore, and
exhibit in situ as much of the fortress wall of the Roman city of
Bononia as possible.
“This
is a very promising [archaeological] site. Vidin is literally walking
on top of its history. This history can be shown, and attract additional
numbers of tourists,” says archaeologist Vanya Stavreva.
The Danube city of Vidin boasts Bulgaria’s best preserved medieval fortress, or, rather, castle, the Baba Vida Fortress,
which seems to have been the citadel of the medieval fortress that
emerged as the successor of Ancient Roman Bononia. The management of the
Baba Vida Fortress was granted to Vidin Municipality in 2017.
The
2018 excavations of the ruins of the Ancient Roman city of Bononia
which have led to the unearthing of the decagonal fortress tower have
been supported by volunteering college and high school students, while
Vidin Municipality dispatched a group of its construction workers to
help with the digs.
Learn
more about the history of the Bononia Fortress and the Baba Vida Castle
in Bulgaria’s Vidin in the Background Infonotes below!
The
ruins of the decagonal Roman tower from Bononia are found in the midst
of a residential quarter in Bulgaria’s Vidin. Photos: TV grabs from BNT
The Ancient Roman fortress Bononia and the fortified medieval Bulgarian city of Badin / Bdin with the surviving castle (fortress) Baba Vida are the predecessors of modern-day northwestern Bulgarian Danube city of Vidin.
The history of Vidin began in the 3rd century BC when it was founded as a Celtic settlement named Dunonia (meaning “fortified hill") called Dunavia by the Ancient Thracians. After the region was conquered by Ancient Rome in the 1st
century BC, the Romans called the settlement Bononia, and turned it
into a major fortress on the Limes Moesiae (the Danube Limes), the
frontier Lower Danube region of the Roman Empire that was supposed to
stop barbarian attacks from the north and east.
According to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Zdravko Dimitrov from the National Institute and Museum of Archaeology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences,
Bononia was the largest Roman fortress on the Lower Danube, with a
fortified territory of 200 decares (app. 50 acres). Its fortress walls
were 2.7-3 meters thick, and it had several huge fortress towers; for
example, fortress tower No. 8 excavated by Dimitrov in 2014 had a
diameter of 30 meters (some suppose that the floors inside the fortress
towers were used as a military barracks). The coins and ceramics
unearthed in 2014 indicate that the Roman fortress Boninia was built in
the 320s or the 330s AD, during the reign of Roman Emperor Constantine
the Great (r. 306-337 AD) even though the archaeologists who worked on
the excavations in Bulgaria’s Vidin in the 1970s at first thought that
it was constructed somewhat later, at the end of the 4th and the
beginning of the 5th century AD.
Much
of the modern-day city of Vidin appears to be lying on top of the ruins
of the huge Roman fortress Bononia, which was part of the Roman
province of Moesia Superior. Among the archaeological finds in the city
of Vidin, Bulgarian paleo-ornithologist Prof. Zlatozar Boev from the National Museum of Natural History in Sofia has identified bird bones dating from the 8th until the 17th century AD of 7 bird species, including the western capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus),
also known as the wood grouse, heather cock or capercaillie, which is
now extinct in this part of Bulgaria; the common crane (Grus grus), and some of Bulgaria’s earliest remains of a domesticated turkey (Meleagris gallopavo f. domestica) in Bulgaria.
When
the Slavs settled in the region of today’s Northwest Bulgaria in the
Early Middle Ages, they called the city Budin or Bdin. The medieval
Bulgarian fortress, or castle, to be more precise, known as Baba Vida
was built in the 10th
century AD, during the First Bulgarian Empire (632/680-1018 AD), on top
of the foundations of the Roman fortress Bononia. The Baba Vida Castle
is said to be the best preserved medieval Bulgarian fortress since the
numerous other Bulgarian fortresses were destroyed by the invading
Ottoman Turks at the end of the 14th
century AD (the Ottoman Turks called Baba Vida a “virgin" fortress
because it was not taken by them by force). The Baba Vida Castle
(Fortress) surviving today was the inner and most fortified part of the
medieval city of Bdin (Vidin), and was in fact used as the castle of the
local feudal lord; remains of the city’s outer fortress wall have been
revealed in Vidin’s quarter Kaleto (“kale" is the Turkish word meaning
“fortress" used to denote many fortresses across Bulgaria). The Baba
Vida Castle has an area of 5 decares (app. 1.25 acres), and consists of
two concentric rectangular walls with 4 fortress towers, which used to
be surrounded by a water moat (which still fills up with water today
when the level of the Danube rises), and had a drawbridge (which is
today replaced with a stone bridge). It lies on top of the remains of a
large fortress tower in the northeastern section of the Roman fortress
Bononia.
The name of the Baba Vida
(meaning “Grandmother Vida") Fortress or Castle is believed to stem
from a Bulgarian folklore legend, which says that a rich Bulgarian boyar
(aristocrat) divided his feudal estate among his three daughters –
Vida, Kula, and Gamza. Vida received the city of Vidin (Bdin), Kula
received the area of today’s town of Kula, and Gamza received the area
of the town of Gamzigrad (today in Serbia, located on the site of the
Ancient Roman city of Felix Romuliana built by Roman Emperor Galerius
(r. 293-311 AD)). Vida was the only one of the three daughters who
managed to build a huge fortress, and she never married because she
dedicated her life to the fortress’s defense against foreign invaders.
According
to Byzantine chroniclers, in 1003 AD, during the reign of Bulgarian
Tsar Samuil (r. 977/997-1014 AD), the fortress city of Bdin withstood
successfully an eight-month siege led personally by Byzantine Emperor
Basil II the Bulgar-slayer (r. 976-1025 AD) who eventually defeated the
First Bulgarian Empire in 1018 AD. Before that, in 971-976 AD, Vidin is
said to have been the center of the feudal region ruled by Samuil (one
of the four Cometopuli (counts)) while his three other brothers ruled
feudal regions to the south.
Badin
/ Bdin was a very important city during the Second Bulgarian Empire
(1185-1396 AD), and especially in the second half of the 14th
century AD. It was technically the last Bulgarian capital to be
conquered by the Ottoman Turks. After Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Alexander (r.
1331-1371 AD) lost his two eldest sons – Ivan in 1349 AD and Mihail in
1355 AD – in battles with the Ottoman Turks, he failed to prevent a
number of Bulgarian feudal lords seceding, and on top of that divided
the remainder of the Bulgarian Tsardom between his two surviving sons.
His
third son Ivan Sratsimir (r. 1371-1396) received the smaller so called
Vidin Tsardom, with the Danube city of Bdin (Vidin) as its capital, and
his fourth son Ivan Shishman (r. 1371-1395) received the rest, the so
called Tarnovo Tsardom, with the capital proper of Tarnovgrad (today’s
Veliko Tarnovo). Just two decades later all Bulgarian lands, disunited
and even warring among themselves, fell prey to the invading Ottoman
Turks, ushering Bulgaria into five centuries of Ottoman Yoke
(1396-1878/1912), and signifying a practically irreversible loss of its
former great power status.
The
modern-day look of the Baba Vida Castle was shaped during the reign of
Tsar Ivan Sratsimir of the Vidin Tsardom when the fortifications of the
city of Bdin (Vidin) were strengthened. Its best preserved tower is 16
meters high, has 2.8-meter thick walls, and is known as Sratsimir’s
Tower. Before that, in 1365 AD, the city of Bdin (Vidin) was occupied by
the Hungarians who called it Budony; however, they were driven out by
the Bulgarian forces in 1369 AD.
The
Ottoman Turks conquered the Tarnovo Tsardom (whose territory roughly
corresponded to today’s Central Bulgaria) in 1393-5 AD (the main capital
of the Second Bulgarian Empire, Tarnovgrad (today’s Veliko Tarnovo),
fell after a three-month siege in 1393), and the Dobrudzha Despotate
(also known as the Principality of Karvurna, in today’s Northeast
Bulgaria and Southeast Romania) in 1395 AD, as well as the feudal states
in the regions of Thrace and Macedonia which were part of the Second
Bulgarian Empire.
By
that time, Tsar Ivan Sratsimir, ruler of the Vidin (Bdin) Tsardom, had
become a vassal of the Ottoman Turkish sultan. However, in 1396 AD,
Hungarian King Sigismund of Luxembourg (r. 1387-1437 AD, later Holy
Roman Emperor in 1433-1437 AD), organized a crusade against the Ottoman
Turks leading Tsar Ivan Sratsimir to lend him full support. King
Sigismund’s Crusade, however, ended in a disaster for the Christian
forces in the Battle of Nicopolis (today’s Bulgarian town of Nikopol),
after which Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I had Tsar Ivan Sratsimir chained and
exiled in Bursa, Anatolia, where he was either killed or died in a
dungeon, allegedly in 1402 AD.
Tsar
Ivan Sratsimir’s heir, Konstantin (Constantine), however, was saved as
the Ottoman forces entered Bdin (Vidin) in 1396 AD, and later together
with his first counsin, Fruzhin, the son of Tsar Ivan Shishman, the
ruler of the Tarnovo Tsardom, staged the so called Uprising of
Konstantin and Fruzhin in 1408-1413 AD against the Ottoman Turks in
today’s Northwest Bulgaria, which was ultimately unsuccessful. The
majority of the Bulgarian historians believe that his was the end of the
Vidin (Bdin) Tsardom, and of the Second Bulgarian Empire, respectively.
Some
Bulgarian historians believe, however, that Tsar Ivan Sratsimir’s son
became Tsar Konstantin II Asen (r. 1397-1422 AD) ruling as the Emperor
of Bulgaria based in Bdin (Vidin), and controlling at least some of the
northwestern territories of the Second Bulgarian Empire. A number of
historical sources mention the Bulgarian Tsardom (Empire) and Tsar
Konstantin II Asen from 1396 until 1422 AD, leading to the conclusion
that after 1396 the Vidin Tsardom remained a vassal state of the
Ottomans while also fighting against them.
According
to this “alternative history" which has not made its way into Bulgarian
history textbooks yet, in 1408-1413 AD, Tsar Konstantin II and his
first cousin Fruzhin did not stage an uprising but the former was
helping the latter try to regain his former throne in Veliko Tarnovo.
After 1413-1417, Tsar Konstantin II spent most of his time in Serbia and
Hungary, and is known to have died in 1422 in the Serbian royal court
in Belgrade. Even though according to the mainstream history of
Bulgaria, the Vidin Tsardom, and all of the Second Bulgarian Empire, was
conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1396 AD, Ottoman records do not
mention the existence of a Vidin Sanzhak (sancak in Turkish was an
administrative unit in the Ottoman Empire) until 1430 AD.
The
other “last" Bulgarian Tsar, Konstantin II’s first cousin (Tsar)
Fruzhin, the heir to the throne in Tarnovgrad (Veliko Tarnovo) continued
to participate in all Christian campaigns against the Ottoman Empire,
which were also expected to achieve Bulgaria’s liberation, including the
two unsuccessful Crusades of the Polish King Vladislav (Wladyslaw) III
(r. 1424-1444 AD) in 1443 and 1444 AD (also known as Vladislav
Varnenchik (Vladislav of Varna) because he was killed in the Battle of
Varna in 1444 AD). Fruzhin held a feudal estate in the Kingdom of
Hungary, and died in 1460 AD in the city of Brasov in Wallachia.
After
they conquered the city of Bdin, the Ottoman Turks called it Vidin
based on its Greek name Vidini (which is how, paradoxically, it is still
called in today’s Bulgaria), and also used it as a major stronghold. In
the 17th and 18th
century, the city of Vidin was conquered a number of times by the
forces of the Austrian Empire. In 1689, the Austrians strengthened
Vidin’s fortifications which helped preserve the Baba Vida Castle in a
better condition in the following centuries. After the end of the 18th
century, the Ottoman Turks no longer used the Vidin Fortress for
defensive purposes but as an arms depot and a dungeon where they kept
and tortured Bulgarian freedom fighters. The imprisoned Bulgarian
revolutionaries drew letters and signs (which can be seen today) on the
walls of the dungeon to keep track of time.
Between
1794 and 1807, Vidin was the capital of Ottoman Janissary and
separatist Osman Pazvantoglu who conquered for himself a sizable domain
of Ottoman lands in today’s Northwest Bulgaria while warring with the
Turkish sultan. During the period of Ottoman Yoke, the city of Vidin and
the Vidin region were the center of several uprisings of the Bulgarians
against the Ottoman rule, including the major uprisings in 1773 and
1850, all of which were crushed by the Ottoman forces with bloody
atrocities. After Bulgaria’s National Liberation in 1878, Vidin has
remained one of the country’s most important cities.
