Bulgaria’s Kula to Restore Archaeology Museum at Roman Fortress Castra Martis, Promotes Joint Route with Felix Romuliana (Gamzigrad) in Serbia
The ruins of the Ancient Roman fortress Castra Martis in the town of Kula in Northwest Bulgaria. Photo: Kula Municipality
The northwestern Bulgarian town of Kula is moving to restore an archaeological museum which used to exist at the ruins of the Ancient Roman fortress Castra Martis, whose preserved ruins include a 16-meter-tall tower.
The Ancient Roman fortress Castra Martis is located in the center of Kula; in fact, its sole standing fortress tower has given the name to the modern-day town whose name means “tower” in Bulgarian.
Kula used to have a municipal museum exhibiting the archaeological artifacts discovered in Castra Martis but it was shut down in 1990 for lack of funding, Kula Mayor Vladimir Vladimirov has told the Stroitelstvo Imoti weekly.
Kula Municipality has now won a grant of BGN 150,000 (app. EUR 75,000) from the Beautiful Bulgaria Program of the Bulgarian government which will be used to revamp the former museum building. The Municipality plans to appoint two curators who will also provide tour guide services for the tourists visiting the Ancient Roman fortress.
Castra Martis (meaning “Mars’s Fortresses”) actually consists of two fortresses located next to one another – one from the end of the 3rd-beginning of the 4th century AD, and another from the second quarter of the 4th century AD.
Castra Martis was rebuilt in the Early Byzantine period but was destroyed in the barbarian invasion of the Avars and Slavs at the end of the 6th century. It was partly rebuilt and used once again in the Late Middle Ages, by the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396 AD).
Learn more about the Castra Martis Fortress in Kula and the Bononia / Bdin / Baba Vida Fortress in Vidin in the Background Infonotes below.
Kula Mayor Vladimir Vladimirov says the restoration of the former municipal museum could start by the end of May 2016.
The Municipality also plans to expand another museum and gallery in Kula – the former home of renowned Bulgarian painter Alexander Poplilov (1916-2001). In 2016, Kula is going to celebrate the 100th anniversary since the painter’s birth.
Vladimirov has pointed out that in 2015 his administration completed a project for establishing a cultural tourism route including three Roman (and medieval) fortress in the region: Castra Martis in Kula, the Bononia (Bdin) Fortress with its surviving medieval castle Baba Vida in the Danube city of Vidin, and the Felix Romuliana Fortress in the Gamzigrad archaeological complex near the town of Zajecar in Serbia.
“Gamzigrad-Romuliana, Palace of Galerius” has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2007.
The three Ancient Roman and medieval fortresses are located within 50 km of one another, and can be visited in a single day, notes the Kula Mayor, adding that the region is yet to see a boost of cultural tourism based on this and other projects.
In February 2016, Vladimirov stated that Kula Municipality had drafted a cultural tourism project for the restoration of the Castra Martis Fortress but has had no luck in getting an EU funding grant.
In addition to its joint cultural tourism project with Serbia’s Zajecar, Bulgaria’s Kula is also cooperating on local development projects with the Serbian municipalities Boljevac and Kladovo, and Turnu Magurele in Romania.
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The ruins of the Ancient Roman fortress Castra Martis (meaning “Mars’s Fortresses” in Latin) are located in the center of the town of Kula, Vidin District, in Northwest Bulgaria. The name of the town Kula (meaning “tower” in Bulgarian) is based on the sole surviving 16-meter tall fortress tower of the ruins of Castra Martis.
Castra Martis overlooks the Voynishka River, and actually consists of two late Roman fortresses located next to one another – one from the end of the 3rd-beginning of the 4th century AD, and another from the second quarter of the 4th century AD.
Archaeological excavations have revealed that the construction of the fortress was preceded by the existence of a small Ancient Thracian settlement dating back to the 1st millennium BC, and surviving into the early period of the Roman Empire.
After they conquered the territory of today’s Northern Bulgaria, i.e. the southern bank of the Lower Danube at the beginning of the 1st century AD, the Romans erected the so called Limes Moesiae, the frontier fortifications of the Roman Empire along the Lower Danube. In the 2nd century AD, they conquered the Dacians and the frontier moved north of the Danube. However, at the end of the 3rd century AD, the province of Dacia was lost, and the Limes Moesiae south of the Danube was restored to protect the Empire.
In 271 AD, Roman Emperor Aurelian (r. 270-275 AD) transformed the province of Moesia Superior into the province of Dacia Aureliana with its capital at Serdica (today’s Sofia), after vacating Dacia Traiana beyond the Danube. Around 283 AD, Dacia Aureliana was divided into two provinces, Dacia Mediterranea, with its capital at Serdica, and Dacia Ripensis (“Dacia from the banks of the Danube”) with its capital at Ratiaria (Colonia Ulpia Ratiaria). Castra Martis was located in the province of Dacia Ripensis.
The fortress of Castra Martis was part of the restored Limes Moesiae. It is believed that the first fort of Castra Martis was built by Roman Emperor Diocletian (r. 284-305 AD) around the turn of the 4th century. It protected a road from Bononia (today’s Vidin) to Singidunum (today’s capital of Serbia Belgrade) going through the Vrasha Chuka Pass, which is one of the westernmost passes in the Balkan Mountains.
The fortress of Castra Martis was mentioned in ancient sources in 377 AD, when Roman Emperor Gratian (r. 375-383 AD) stopped there briefly with his troops on his way to the province of Thrace. Castra Martis was damaged during the Gothic invasions at the end of the4th century AD. In 408 AD, the fortress was taken by the Huns under their chief Uldin during a war against the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium). In the 5th century AD, Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea mentioned Castra Martis as one of the Roman fortresses rebuilt by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I the Great (r. 527-565 AD). The fortress was destroyed during the barbarian invasions of Avars and Slavs in Byzantium in 586-587 AD.
In the 13th-14th century, during the Second Bulgarian Empire (1185-1396 AD), Castra Martis was partly rebuilt, and was used for the defense of the Vidin Tsardom against the invading Ottoman Turks at the end of 14th century.
The fortress of Castra Martis consists of two major fortifications – a small older quadriburg, and a larger castra (fortress) located to the south of the quadriburg. The quadriburg dates back to the end of the 3rd – the beginning of the 4th century AD. Numerous similar quadriburgs were built during the reign of Emperor Diocletian in the frontier regions of the Roman Empire
The quadriburg at Castra Martis was a rectangular fort which was 40 meters long and 40 meters wide. It had large fortress towers at its corners, each with a diameter of 12.5. The quadriburg has been well preserved, and fully excavated. Its walls were built using stone and bricks, and were about 2.2 meters wide. The ruins of the fortress wall have been preserved up to an average height of 2 meters. However, the southeastern tower has been preserved up to a height of 16.3 meters; it is this tower that has given the name of the modern-day Bulgarian town of Kula (“Tower”). The quadriburg had a single gate located at its southern wall. At the end of the 4th century, the gate was strengthened with a second wall located 3.3 meters away from the original wall.
Inside the quadriburg, the main building was located closer to the northern fortress wall. In the middle of the fortress, there was a yard lined with two-story buildings, with a well.
The Roman military camp at Castra Martis was located to the south of the quadriburg. In the second quarter of the 4th century AD, possibly during the reign of Roman Emperor Constantine I the Great (r. 306-337 AD), it was turned into a fortress with walls that were 4.3 meters wide. It has a rectangular shape with 7 polygonal towers, and a total area of 15.5 decares (almost 4 acres).
To the northwest of the fortress, the archaeologists have found the foundations of Ancient Roman thermae (public baths) which are construed as evidence that there was civilian population living outside the fortress of Castra Martis.
Castra Martis was first explored and identified in the 1870s by Austro-Hungarian geographer and archaeologist Felix Kanitz. It was excavated by Bulgarian archaeologists in the 1970s. The fortress of Castra Martis in the town of Kula was declared an architectural monument by the Bulgarian authorities in 1965.
Today its ruins are part of the Castra Martis Historical Park which also features a museum collection with artifacts discovered during the archaeological excavations of the Roman fortress.
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The Ancient Roman fortress Bononia and the fortified medieval Bulgarian city of Badin / Bdin with the surviving castle (fortress) Baba Vida (“Grandma 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.
