Ruse

The city emerged as a Thracian settlement that developed into the Roman military and naval centre Sexaginta Prista during the reign of Vespasian (69-70) as part of the fortification system along the northern boundary of Moesia. The fortress was located on the main road between Singidunum (modern Belgrade) and the Danube Delta and was destroyed in the 6th century by Avar and Slavic raids.

In the 13th-14th century, at the time of the Second Bulgarian Empire, a fortified settlement called Rusi (first mentioned in 1380) emerged near the ruins of the Roman town that later strenghtened its position as an important trade centre with the lands on the opposite side of the Danube, until it was conquered by the Ottomans in 1388.

During Ottoman rule, the town was renamed Rusçuk and turned into a large fortress in the 18th century, which later grew into one of the most important Ottoman towns on the Danube and an administrative centre of a vilayet that stretched from Varna and Tulcea to Sofia and Niš.

Rousse developed into one of the centres of the Bulgarian National Revival and the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee.

After it was liberated from the Ottoman Empire on 20 February 1878, Rousse was one of the key cultural and economic centres of the country and the seat of Bulgarian shipping. Intensive building during the period changed the city's architectural appearance to a typical Central European one.