Aquae Calidae (Thrace)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Three Nymphs" (2nd century AD) from Aquae Calidae in the Burgas Archaeological Museum

Aquae Calidae (Latin for warm water (pl.), In old maps also Aquis Calidis = for warm waters , Bulgarian Акве Калиде / Akwe Kalide or Аква Калиде / Akwa Kalide), sometimes accidentally Aqua Calidae , in the Middle Ages under the name Therma and Thermopolis , is a historic city in Thrace on the territory of today's Bulgarian port city of Burgas and was the predecessor settlement of today's Banewo and the mineral baths of Burgas (Bulgarian Бургаски минерални бани / Burgaski mineralni bani). The baths of Aquae Calidae were demonstrably visited by several important rulers in the course of history, in addition to Philip II of Macedonia, among others, by the Eastern Roman emperors Justinian I and Constantine IV , the Bulgarian ruler Terwel and the Ottoman sultan Suleyman I.

location

The ancient baths Aquae Calidae are located in the area of ​​today's Burgas districts Banewo and Wetren , around 10 km from the city center. The site occupied an area between the southern foothills of the Aytos mountain range of the Balkan Mountains and Lake Atanasov .

Bus number 30 of the municipal transport company Burgasbus runs between the two districts and the city center . A taxi ride for the same route takes around 20 minutes and costs around 10 leva (€ 5) in 2012.

history

Thracian sanctuary of the three nymphs

According to archaeological research, the warm springs were used as early as the Neolithic , when between the 6th and 5th millennium BC. In the vicinity three settlements emerged. The Thracians built in the 1st millennium BC Around the source a holy place, which is now called the holy place of the three nymphs and settled on the nearer hill Manastir Tepe . During the archaeological excavations in 1910 and 1999, over 4,000 coins were found from different regions of Europe, including ancient Greece and today's Italy . In addition to the oldest found coin from Apollonia from the 5th century BC. The coins also come from Kabyle , Mesambria (today Nessebar ), Odessos , Histria , Tomis , Byzantion , Abdera , Maroneia and the islands of the Aegean Sea. The earliest records date from the 4th century BC. When Philip II of Macedonia conquered the region. According to a legend, Philipp was often a guest here.

The Roman baths Aquae Calidae

and display information about the image
Aquae Calidae on the Tabula Peutingeriana (edition by Konrad Miller, 1887), the Black Sea can be found at the top of the map

The first baths at the holy place of the three nymphs were built when the Roman Empire under Lucullus in 72 BC. Apollonia and the western Black Sea coast, conquered during the Third Mithridatic War (74–63 BC) . During the reign of Emperor Trajan (98-117), nearby Anchialos became the administrative center of the region. The baths were expanded and two more pools were added. During this time the Roman road Via Pontica was built, which connected Constantinople via Deultum , Anchialos, Aquae Calidae, today's Djulinski Pass and Marcianopolis with Dorostorum and Sexaginta Prista on the Danube . On the road, near the baths, a path station (statio milliaria) with the name Aquae Calidae was built . This is the oldest recorded name of the mineral baths . The Tabula Peutingeriana shows the place under the name Aquis Calidis as a station between Anchialos and Kabyle . This road continued via Beroe to Ranilum and was an east-west junction of the Roman military road Via Militaris .

The sanctuary of the three nymphs continued to exist, next to the path station and the baths, and was known under the name of the nymphs of Anchialos . The baths were also nicknamed the Baths of Anchialos , which was based on the next larger settlement. Under the reign of Emperor Septimius Severus , games and celebrations took place in the baths for three years in 209-211 under the name Severia Nymphea . Games also took place in Aquae Calidae under the emperors Geta and Caracalla .

The 6th century historian Jordanes describes in his work Getica the incursions of Gothic tribes on the southern Black Sea coast of Thrace in the year 270. He reports that the Goths moved to hot springs ("aquarum calidarum") after the conquest of Anchialos twelve miles from Anchialus. They stayed there for several days to recover.

The baths were restored at the end of the 4th / beginning of the 5th century. According to Prokopios of Caesarea , fortress walls were built around the city under Emperor Justinian I. The historian described the emperor's building activities in his work De Aedificiis (About the Buildings) as follows:

“... Thracians live in a port city of Euxeinos Pontos called Anchialos, […] not far from the city, water rises from natural, warm springs that serve as baths for the local population. This settlement, which had not been fortified since ancient times, was not noticed by the old emperors, even if barbarians settled nearby and the sick visited them at risk of death. But now Emperor Justinian has surrounded them with walls and made the healing safe. "

- Prokopios of Caesarea : De Aedificiis

The Eastern Roman Emperor Tiberios I chose the city to cure an illness of his wife Anastasia. When this healing was successful around 580, she donated her imperial robes to the local church. When the Avars under Khan Baian plundered from the north along the Black Sea coast, they also conquered Aquae Calidae (Thermae) in 584 . According to the Byzantine historian Theophylactus Simokates , Baian spared the baths at the request of his harem . In one of the town's churches the Avars found the imperial robes of Anastasia; According to Syrian sources, Baian attracted them and allegedly claimed control of the empire for himself.

Bulgarian and Byzantine Middle Ages

In the late Middle Ages the ancient Aquae Calidae was called Therma and Thermopolis (from the Greek θέρμη ( therme ) = "warm spring" and πόλις ( polis ) = "city"). Under Therma , the city was mentioned in connection with the Battle of Anchialus in 708, when the Bulgarian ruler Terwel defeated the Byzantines under Justinian II . When the Byzantine emperor ceded the Sagore region south of the Terwel Balkan Mountains as thanks for the help during the Second Siege of Constantinople (717–718), the city became part of the Bulgarian state for the first time. The baths were still functioning and the city continued to expand, although the region was at dispute between the Bulgarian and Byzantine empires in the centuries that followed. In 1093 the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos moved army units to the fortified Thermopolis in order to protect the nearby passes of the Balkan Mountains against incursions by the Cumans .

In the 12th century, the Arab geographer al-Idrisi called the city Megali Thermi (Great Thermal Baths) and describes it as " small but beautiful, well-cleared and rich ". In 1204, during the Fourth Crusade, the Latin Empire was founded by Constantinople. During the war with the Bulgarians under Tsar Kalojan , the latter was able to capture the Latin Emperor Baldwin I of Flanders and lock him up in the capital Tarnowo . In retaliation, his brother Heinrich von Flanders plundered Thrace and conquered Thermopolis in 1206. After a three-day rest and cure, the imperial clerk stated: “It was a very beautiful city, in a good location, with many warm springs - the best in the world. We took good prey from it ”. The city was then set on fire on Heinrich's orders. After this fire, the city could no longer recover, although the baths were rebuilt over the next few years.

In 1356 the region was conquered, plundered and given to the Byzantines by the Catalan Company .

Ottoman time

The region fell under Ottoman rule after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 as the last region in what is now Bulgaria . The small settlement that continued to exist next to the baths was called Ladscha (Bulgarian Лъджа, from the Turkish ılıca for medicinal bath) in the Ottoman period . In an Ottoman document from 1502 it is recorded that today's city of Burgas was part of the lands of Ladscha heard in the Ajtos- Nahia.

When the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman I (1520–1566) was successfully cured of gout while staying in the baths in 1562 , he ordered the construction of a hammam on the site of the old Roman baths. The Sultanshammām has survived to this day. In the 17th century, Ladscha was part of the Turkish "country house" (Çiftlik) of Jusuf Bashe, in which 16 Christian families lived. In 1666, 26 Christian families lived there, and the baths are mentioned as the Ladschiite (Bulgarian Лъджите).

After the liberation

After the liberation of Bulgaria in the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877/78, the baths were known as the mineral baths of Aytos , after the municipality in which they were located. In the following decades, refugees from Eastern and Western Thrace (→ Thracian Bulgarians ) and Macedonia (→ Macedonian Bulgarians ) settled in the area of ​​the ancient baths, Ladscha and Çiftlik . In 1934 Ladscha was renamed to Banja (to German bath) and in 1950 to Banewo. The baths became part of the city of Burgas as early as 1900, but were called Mineral Baths of Aitos until the end of the 1980s , when they were renamed Mineral Baths of Burgas . Banewo has been a district of Burgas since 2009.

archeology

Bogdan Filow carried out the first archaeological investigations in 1910. During the cleaning of the basins, he found over 4,000 coins from different eras, pieces of jewelry and other everyday items that were dated from the 5th to the 13th centuries.

Since 2008, large-scale excavations and reconstruction work have been taking place under the direction of Zonja Draschewa (director of the Burgas Regional Museum) and Dimtscho Momchilow from the Assen Slatarow University of Burgas . By 2010, an area of ​​over 3,800 m² had been exposed, including the ancient thermal baths, the north gate and parts of the fortress walls with a thickness of 5 meters, which can be visited. During this time, the floor of the main basin of the ancient thermal baths was secured at 6.3 meters. Then the central building of the thermal baths, the caldarium , with an area of ​​220 m², and its two 3 x 5 meter wide basins, the hypocaust with its sound pipes, became two springs about 30 meters west of it, each with 53 and 42 degrees hot water and a cold water source in the northern part of the thermal baths at a depth of 5.3 meters, which was used in the frigidarium , located and exposed. In addition, eight adjoining rooms in the east wing of the thermal baths were excavated, which, according to Zonja Draschewa, were probably used as shops and kitchens between the 10th century and 1206 when the thermal baths were burned down by Heinrich von Flanders. Bronze coins from this period, glass and bronze bracelets and other items were found in these rooms. Two thirds of the ancient coins found during this period come from Apollonia and Mesambria .

In July 2011 an area of ​​36,000 m² was declared an archaeological reserve Aquae Calidae-Thermopolis .

At the beginning of 2012, the Turkish Douş Holding donated 500,000 leva for the renovation of the old sultanshammam and for further investigations.

literature

  • Gustav Hirschfeld : Aqua, Aquae 24 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 1, Stuttgart 1895, Col. 297.
  • Peter Soustal: Thrakien (Thrakē, Rhodopē and Haimimontos) (= Tabula Imperii Byzantini . Volume 6). Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-7001-1898-8 , p. 477.
  • Petja Kiachkina, Iwan Karajotow: Aquae Calidae. Center de la culture thrace. In: La Thrace et les sociétés maritimes anciennes. Thracia Pontica 6, 1. Center of Underwater Archeology, Sozopol, 1994, pp. 125-130.
  • Ivan Karajotow , Stojan Rajtschewski, Mitko Ivanov: История на Бургас. От древността до средата на ХХ век. (German history of the city of Burgas. From antiquity to the middle of the 20th century. ) Tafprint OOD publishing house, Plovdiv, 2011, ISBN 978-954-92689-1-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In parts of the specialist literature, the - grammatically incorrect - form Aqua Calidae is used. It cannot be clarified whether this is an ancient spelling mistake or whether the error arose in modern times.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Tsonya Drajeva, Dimcho Momchilov: Akve Khalide - Therma, the city of the hot mineral baths Burgas, Bulgaria. Burgas Regional Museum, accessed on February 18, 2012 .
  3. ^ Ralph F. Hoddinott: Bulgaria in Antiquity. An archeological introduction , Ernest Benn Ltd., London, 1975, p. 221.
  4. ↑ Jordanes, Getica 20, 109 (p. 86 ed. Theodor Mommsen (ed.): Auctores antiquissimi 5.1: Iordanis Romana et Getica. Berlin 1882 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized )): “Ibi ergo multis feruntur mansisse diebus aquarum calidarum delectati lavacris, quae ad duodecimo miliario Anchialitanae civitatis sunt siti, ab imo suae fontis ignei scaturrientes, et inter reliqua totius mundi thermarum innumerabilum loca omnino precipua et ad sanitatem infirmorum efficacisima ”; Herwig Wolfram : The Goths. 4th edition, CH Beck, Munich 2001, p. 65.
  5. ↑ Prokopios, De aedificiis 3, 7, 18-23 ( English translation ).
  6. ↑ Michael Wendel: The war campaign of the Avars in 586/87 AD through northern Thrace. In Pontos Euxeinos. Contributions to the archeology and history of the ancient Black Sea and Balkan regions, ZAKS Schriften 10, Verlag Beier & Beran, Langenweissbach 2006, pp. 447–461.
  7. ↑ The interpretation of this episode (handed down in the Syrian world chronicle of Michael Syrus 2, 362 from the 12th century) is controversial, cf. on this Walter Pohl : The Avars. CH Beck, Munich 2002, p. 78.
  8. ↑ ılıca ( Memento from July 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) in the Turkish-German dictionary
  9. ↑ a b Karajotow, Rajtschewski, Iwanow: p. 295.
  10. ↑ Rosiza Ameewa: Further information on the Turkish baths. darikradio.net, accessed December 22, 2010 (Bulgarian). and Wesselin Maksimow: The old fortress walls came out underground. Interview with Zonja Draschewa, head of the museums in Burgas. darikradio.net, accessed December 22, 2010 (Bulgarian).
  11. ↑ Бургас с правила за опазването на защитените зони и паметниците. econ.bg, accessed October 31, 2011 (Bulgarian): "Министерството на културата вече определи границите на археологическия резерват - 36 дка, върху които се намира древният град с прочутите терми "
  12. ↑ Douş Holding donates 500,000 leva for Auqa Calidae. (No longer available online.) Burgasnews.com, archived from the original on April 2, 2012 ; Retrieved February 18, 2012 (Bulgarian).

Web links

Commons : Aquae Calidae  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 42 ° 37 '  N , 27 ° 24'  E