History
Highly skilled gold- and coppersmiths lived around the Gulf of Varna 6000 years ago, and their Thracian descendants littered the interior with burial mounds, but Varna's importance as a port really dates from 585 BC, when a mixed bag of Apollonians and Milesians established the Greek city-state of Odyssos . The town's best years came in the second and third centuries when it was the Roman province of Moesia's main outlet to the sea, a bustling place where Greek and Thracian cultures met and mingled. Devastated by the Avars in 586 AD, and repopulated by Slavs (who were probably responsible for renaming it Varna , or "Black One"), it nevertheless remained the region's biggest port and an important staging-post for the Byzantine fleet on its way to the Danube. Declining somewhat under the Turks, Varna recovered as an important trading centre in the nineteenth century, when a population of Bulgarians, Greeks, Turks and Gagauz (Turkic-speaking Christians) made it one of the coast's more cosmopolitan centres. To the Turks, Varna was the key to the security of the western Black Sea, and the town's military role is still reflected in the students of Varna's Naval Academy, who stride around town in uniforms belted with ceremonial daggers.
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