Mangalia, Constanța County, Romania

🇷🇴 Mangalia is a city and a port on the coast of the Black Sea in the south-east of Constanța County, Northern Dobruja, Romania.

The municipality of Mangalia also administers several summertime seaside resorts: Cap Aurora, Jupiter, Neptun, Olimp, Saturn, Venus.

History The Greek town Callatis existed until the mid-7th century under this name. Life in the town resumed from the 10th century. In the 13th century Callatis came to be known as Pangalia. The Vlachs called it Tomisovara and the Greeks called it Panglicara. From the 16th century the town had acquired its present name, Mangalia.

A Greek colony named Callatis was founded in the 6th century BC by the city of Heraclea Pontica. Its first silver coinage was minted around 350 BC. In 72 BC, Callatis was conquered by the Roman general Lucullus and was assigned to the Roman province of Moesia Inferior. Throughout the 2nd century AD, the city built defensive fortifications and the minting of coinage under the Roman emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla continued. Callatis suffered multiple invasions in the 3rd century AD but recovered in the 4th century AD to regain its status as an important trade hub and port city. From the 7th to the 11th century the city was under the rule of the First Bulgarian Empire.

Geography Mangalia is positioned with an approximate elevation of 10 meters, 44 km (27 miles) south of the municipality of Constanţa, on the same latitude as the French resort of Nice. Mangalia is one of the southernmost resorts on the Romanian coast of the Black Sea.

Tourist attractions • The city has been well known in recent years as the place where one of the largest summer festivals in Romania takes place: Callatis Festival; • The Scythian tomb discovered in 1959 where archaeologists unearthed fragments of a papyrus in Greek, the first document of this kind in Romania; • The incineration tombs (the necropolis of the Callatis citadel, dating back to the 4th-2nd centuries BC); • The ruins of the Callatis citadel (6th century BC); • The Turkish Esmahan Sultan Mosque (16th century); • The Archaeology Museum which shelters a rich collection of amphorae and sculptures from the Hellenistic epoch, fragments of stone sarcophagi; • Mangalia Marina.