Castra Martis

The border town of Kula is located 32 southwestern direction of Vidin, where the Danube hill plain joins the last spurs of Balkan Mountain. The present name of the town Kula (tower) is due to the Roman tower situated in the center of the town. The live here and the fortress construction are related to the Roman and Early- Byzantine age. After conquering the lands between the Danube River and the Balkan Mountain (1st century AD) they were included in the Moesia province. Favorable conditions for the development of the agriculture, crafts and trade, as well as the city administration were created in Moesia. The major city in the district was Ratsiaria, today’s Archar village. The Bononia fortress erected near Vidin. In the end of the 3rd century AD the Roman rule in Dacia was repulsed. This imposed launching a number of preventive measures and the establishment of Coastal Dacia province with main city Ratsiaria. The recovery of the Danube Limes started and a lot of fortresses were constructed on strategic inner places. One of them, in the Coastal Dacia province, was the Castra Martis fortress. It held a key position for the most western Balkan Mountain passage Vrashka Chuka, and protected the important road from Bononia to Singidunum (Belgrade). Castra Martis had a very important role for the defense of these lands. The fortress rises on the sheer slope above the defile of the Voinishka river, in the center of the nowadays town. The archeological excavations showed that before constructing the fortress a small Thracian-Roman settlement existed here, in which the live started yet in the in the 1st millennium BC, and lasted until the first centuries of the Roman Empire. Today, the Castra Martis Hill is located on the Livingston Island - an Antarctic island in the South Shetland Islands, Western Antarctica lying between Greenwich and Snow Islands. The peak was named after the Roman settlement of Castra Martis, ancestor of the present town of Kula in Northwestern Bulgaria.