Not far from the town of Măcin, another tourist attraction attracts the attention of visitors: the Troesmis fortress.
Troesmis, located in the northwest of Dobrogea, on the banks of the Măcin branch of the Danube, at a distance of 3 kilometers from the town of Turcoaia, was built by the Romans on the site of a Getic fortress.
Troesmis was, throughout the entire ancient period, an important strategic point, its oldest mention being in Ovidius’ Pontice. Later, the settlement was mentioned by Ptolemy as a camp of the 5th Macedonica legion.
Around 100 AD, the Troesmis fortress became a Roman military center, thus developing a civilian settlement where craftsmen and merchants settled.
During the period of the Dominion (which began after the end of the crisis from 235 – 284 and lasted until the siege of Constantinople and the collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire from 1453), a new defensive system composed of two smaller fortifications was erected on the site of the old fortress .
Rebuilt during the reign of Emperor Justinian, the Troesmis fortress lost its urban function in the first half of the 7th century.
The area began to be inhabited again in the 10th – 11th centuries, a fact mentioned in the documents of the time and confirmed by archaeological discoveries.
The ruins of the fortress were not investigated on their entire surface, but three defensive waves, a canal, two aqueducts, horseshoe-shaped towers at the corners, two Christian basilicas and the walls of several edifices were revealed. The first archaeological investigations of the Troesmis site took place in the years 1860, 1865 – 1868, when Emperor Napoleon III sent a French archaeological mission to Dobrogea for this purpose.
Access to the Troesmis citadel can be made on the road derived from the Tulcea – Măcin road (DN22D).