Mezdra Town

The modern settlement was founded at the beginning of the 19th century on part of the lands of the villages of Darmantsi and Moravitsa. It is located 12 km east of Vratsa and is located on an ancient and medieval layer of settlements on the left bank of the Iskar River. The Mezdra region is rich in archaeological and historical monuments.
The remains of a Neolithic settlement are known in the corner between the Iskar River and the Bodenska Bara. At the base of the Gradishte fortress (Kaleto) a cultural layer of a settlement that existed at the end of the Mesolithic and Stone Ages is preserved. Under the ancient and medieval layer, burnt floors of dwellings and ovens and burnt household equipment are revealed, which indicates that this prehistoric settlement perished in a natural fire. On the territory of the city and around it, a dozen Thracian tomb mounds have been preserved, which have not been studied. Members of the Thracian aristocracy with landowner estates in this area are buried in them. There are also remains of a Thracian settlement that existed during the Bronze and Iron Ages.

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  The Gradishte fortress (Kaleto) was fortified during the Roman era and was a stronghold for guarding the Serdica - Escus road (village of Gigen on the Danube River) and its diversion to Montanesium (Montana). Interesting monuments with inscriptions have been found in the ruins of Gradishte. On a statue pedestal it is written in ancient Greek that the statue was erected in honor of the emperor Alexander Severus (222–225), but the statue itself has not been found. A road column from the time of the emperor Septimius Severus (192–211) was also discovered. On a stone pillar there is an inscription in ancient Greek, which reads that the territory of Serdica reached this far. A late antique settlement arose outside the fortress, where interesting finds have been revealed. Roman coin treasures have been found on the territory of today's city. More than a thousand silver Roman Republican coins from the 2nd and 1st centuries BC have been found. In August 2017, the last treasure was discovered, including several hundred silver Roman coins. This shows that many wealthy people lived in the Roman settlement outside the Gradishte fortress. During the Bulgarian Middle Ages, the Gradishte fortress was repaired from the destruction during the Great Migration of Peoples and was used until it fell under the Turkish yoke. This Bulgarian fortress and the settlement around it were called Darmanitsa (according to another translation of the Ottoman document from the 15th century – Torbovitsa). The name Darmanitsa is Proto-Bulgarian or Cuman-Pecheneg and comes from the personal name of a person called Darman and the ancient ending -itsa. We find the name of the fortress and the settlement in an Ottoman document from the 15th century, where it is written: “…the Darmanitsi gorge, empty. It is located near Moravitsa.” The Turkish conquerors destroyed the fortress and the settlement of Darmanitsa. However, there is something very similar between the names of medieval Darmanitsa and the neighboring modern village of Darmantsi. The second name is a residential name and derives from the first, as the inhabitants of Darmanitsa are Darmantsi. But when this migration from Darmanitsa to the village of Darmantsi took place is not clear, because both the Darmanitsa hamlet and the village of Darmantsi appear together in the same Ottoman document from the 15th century. The name Mezdra is of Turkish origin (it comes from the Arabic ‚mazra’ – a farm, a settlement on arable land. It was used to refer to no-man’s land between several neighboring villages’ lands. You may come across the erroneous statement that “mezra” means a deserted, uninhabited place. At the beginning of the 19th century, several families of shepherds who came from the Stara Planina villages along the Defileto settled in the Princhovets area along the Kamenitsa River, 2 km west of the present-day town. In an Ottoman document from 1863, which refers to the collection of food for rations for Circassian colonists settled in the Vratsa district, the village of Mezra is recorded with 360 oki barley. In the early seventies, Felix Kanitz visited Mezdra and described its inhospitable appearance. There were between 15 and 20 houses with "gray roofs of thin limestone slabs". The liberation of Bulgaria left Mezdra as a village with little pasture and arable land. But in 1886, the bridge over the Iskar River and the road to Botevgrad were built here, and in 1893, the Vratsa resident Todor Balabanov completed the construction of the Mezdra distillery. In 1897, the construction of the Roman-Sofia railway line was completed. The village of Mezdra became a significant railway junction soon after the railway line to the city of Vidin was separated from there. All this gradually created opportunities for the livelihood of the population and for its retention. In the following years, the inhabitants of Mezdra rapidly increased with migration from neighboring villages. In 1920, the inhabitants were already 1,015, and the village took on the appearance of a small town with a train station, police station, courthouse, etc. public buildings. Electrification began in 1923, and water supply to Mezdra in 1926. The settlement of Mezdra was declared a town by Decree No. 435, promulgated on 31.VIII.1950.