Place:Zimnicea, Teleorman, Romania

Watchers


NameZimnicea
TypeCity
Coordinates43.65°N 25.35°E
Located inTeleorman, Romania
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names


the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Zimnicea is a town in Teleorman County, Romania (in the historic region of Muntenia), a port on the Danube opposite the Bulgarian city of Svishtov.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Zimnicea developed near a Geto-Dacian fortress (about west of town centre). Traditional agriculture, fishing, iron processing, carpentry, pottery, tissue exchange of products were the occupations of the people throughout the town's existence. The natives of Zimnicea sold grain, cattle, sheep, fish, butter, salt, honey, wax, timber and bought cloth, oriental fabric, carpets and spices.

In 1838, the settlement Zimnicea was passed in the fairs, with the general population census of that year 551 families and 3,046 inhabitants. In the years 1837-1839 Zimnicea became the capital of Teleorman County.

Near Zimnicea there are ruins of several ancient fortresses and fortifications from the 4th to the 1st century BC. The oldest are believed by some scholars to have been built to defend the town from Alexander the Great's general, Lysimachus.

The name of the town was first mentioned in 1385 in the travel logs of Christian pilgrims on their way home from their trip to Jerusalem. The Byzantines called it Demnitzikos and later on Dzimnikes or Dzimnikos. The town flourished as a trade post on the trade routes that linked Central Europe to the Balkans.

In 1835, it had 531 households, being the twelfth largest market town in Wallachia. For a short time in 1837 to 1838, it was the capital of Teleorman County, but due to internal dissent between the landowners and merchants, it was replaced by Alexandria.

During the Romanian War of Independence (1877–1878), it was the headquarters of the Russians troops fighting in Bulgaria against the Ottoman Empire. During World War I, German Empire troops crossed the Danube in the Zimnicea sector, effectively bringing down the Romanian front in Muntenia.

During the 1977 Romanian earthquake there were allegedly not many buildings destroyed by the earthquake itself. Most of the destruction is said to have actually been done after the natural disaster by bulldozer, being ordered by local authorities, in order to receive financial allowances from the central government to create a new town from scratch on a new design. In the next period, a new town hall, the House of Culture, a new hospital (with Austrian funding), a new high school (with funds allocated by the Swiss government), and numerous blocks of flats were built, but many other projects remained abandoned after the fall of the communist regime, amid declining local industry, and by a subsequent decline in population.

Research Tips


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Zimnicea. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.