PlovDiv: A city older than Rome, Carthage and Constantinople

The City of PlovDiv found in modern day Bulgaria is perhaps some of the Oldest Cities of our time. It is older than Rome, Carthage or Constantinople. It is one city that has changed names several times over the ages. It started as Eumolpias but later became Philippopolis, Trimontium, Philibe and finally PlovDiv.Today PlovDiv is a modern city with powerful ancient roots that are still conspicuous. It is city between three hills at the base Rhodope Mountains. A walk down the cities ancient streets will reveal an abundant evidence of its glorious and tumultuous past. Edifices built by the Thracians, a feared race that lived hundreds of years before the Common Era can still be seen along with Greek Pillars, Roman theatres and Turkish minarets.

Archeological discoveries in and around the city reveal that it was inhabited before the first Millennium BC. A Roman Historian Ammianus Marcellinus wrote that before the first century BC, a Thracian fortified settlement named Eumolpias existed at what is PlovDive today but it was conquered by Philip II of Macedonia. Philip Changed the City’s name to Philippopolis, but when the Romans regained control over the city in 46 BC, they called it Trimontium.

After the decline of the Roman Empire in the Dark Ages, Slavic people settled in the area but by about he 14th Century, the Turks took control of the city and named it Philibe and remained the masters here until 1878. The Jumaia Mosque and it minaret and sundial still stand today.

When the Russians conquered the city in 1878 from the Turks, the city’s name was changed from Philibe to PlovDiv and from 1892 to on, it became a booming economic centre of Bulgaria.