The town Rousse
is the biggest Bulgarian city on the river Danube. The town
is situated in south East Part of the Republic Bulgaria and
at about 300km away from the Capital. Municipality Rousse
included the following villiges: Rousse, village Marten, village
Nikolovo, village Sandrovo, village Basarbovo, village Tetovo,
village Thervena voda, village Novo selo, village Semerdhzievo,
village Prosena, village Hotanza, village Dolno Ablanovo and
village Yastrebovo.
1 City
12 villages
Population till end of 2004: 183 344 residents
Densety of population per square kilometer: 345,5 |
Rousse is an ancient Bulgarian borough and a port on the Danube
River. People settled here in ancient times since the river
provided a living. As seen on the prehistoric settlement hill,
the people in that earliest period lived in a place with clearly
distinguished residential and public buildings, streets and
neighbourhoods. The clay idols worshiped as guardians of life
that have been found during excavations are now kept in the
museum.
The castle
and the fleet station called Sexsaginta Prista were built
under the Roman Emperor Vespasianus (69 - 79 A.D.)
The castle
was on the main road from where Belgrade is today to the
delta of the Danube River. As the milestones that were once
at the exits of Sexsaginta Prista indicate, that was the
starting point of roads to the towns of Nove (Svishtov),
Martianopolis (Devnya), Odesos (Varna) and Nicopolis ad
Istrum (near the village of Nikyup, district Veliko Tarnovo).
Written sources
show three versions of the name of the castle: Sexsaginta
Prista, Sexsanta Prista or just Prista. The root of the
first part of the name is the Latin numeral sexsaginta,
which translates as “sixty”. The second part
comes from Greek (prista, pristis) and means a kind of an
ancient speedy battle ship with oars. It is supposed that
there were 60 berths in Prista, hence the name of the castle:
the port town for sixty ships.
Felix Kaniz,
an Austrian-Hungarian scholar, was the first one who identified
Rousse of today with the ancient castle of Sexsaginta Prista.
The Skorpil brothers were the first ones to make archaeological
excavations. They described the castle, investigated some
burial places, collected coins and items used in the day-to-day
life and published some of the inscriptions they had found.
No systematic
excavations have been made on the site where the castle
used to be. However, some rescue excavations have been made
on spots jeopardised by modern city development. It is through
them that the northeastern battle tower, a part of the northern
wall and the remains of four buildings have been investigated.
The tower is rectangle, its inner sizes 4,00 x 3,80 m and
its walls 2,70 m thick. 50 m of the northern wall are preserved.
Its width is between 2,75 and 3,00 m.
An official
inscription dated to the reign of Diocletianus (298-299)
announces that the fort was restored as a praesidium (a
large garrison settlement) after it was ruined by the raids
of the Goths (250 A.D).
Sexsaginta
Prista shared the doom of the rest of the forts on the right
bank of the Lower Danube. It was destructed by Avars and
Slavs in the late 6th and early 7th century. At a later
time, in 9th-10th century, its ruins served as the foundations
of a medieval Bulgarian borough called Rousse. In the course
of time it became a fort on the Danube River and resumed
its guarding functions. The archaeological finds dated to
the First Bulgarian Kingdom provide evidences of the existence
of that Bulgarian fort and settlement.
In the heathen
period (till the mid 9th century) the settlement was called
Rousse on the name of a feast called Roussalii. Researchers
say that there was a cult to Maiden Roussa who was believed
to protect young men in battle units.
Transport Facts
Rousse
is a major centre for transport. Two of the Pan European routes
have their crossing point here: Corridor 7 and Corridor 9.
The Danube waterway was connected in 1992 to the Main River
and the Rhine River via the Europe Canal. Thus, Corridor 7
from Rotterdam to Thessalonica is the key axis of European
inland waterways. Corridor 9 links North, Middle and East
Europe to the Aegean Sea via Danube Bridge at Rousse and Giurgiu.
To finalize that corridor, the railway line from Rousse to
Podkova needs to be extended via the border with Greece to
Komotini, and the motorway needs to be extended to Porto Lago
likewise. The project for a tunnel under the Shipka Pass is
on that corridor.
Rousse
is a strategic northern gate to Bulgaria as via the Danube
River the country is open to Central and West Europe. Hence
it is the biggest Bulgarian river port. In terms of cargo
turnover, in better times it ranked from the sixth to the
third busiest port among the principal ports of the other
countries on the Danube alongside with Reni, Galati, Izmail,
Budapest and Linz. Rousse Port Complex embraces port Rousse-West;
port Rousse-East and the ports of Svishtov, Somovit, Tutrakan
and Silistra.
The
headquarters of the Bulgarian River Shipping Company are in
Rousse. It was established in 1935 when the first passenger
line Rousse-Vidin-Rousse was launched, with the reconstructed
steamers the Iskar, the Vit and the Osam. Originally, river
passenger transport was a division within the National Bulgarian
Railway Company. It was only on 30 May 1940 when it became
an independent shipping company. It received four cargo ships
with refrigerator units built in Regensburg – the Rousse,
the Vidin, the Lom and the Svishtov, plus a ferryboat, the
Sofia, built in Walsum am Rhine for a railway connection between
Bulgaria and Romania, and three passenger ships built in Budapest
that were very sophisticated for that time: the Tsar Boris
III, the Tsarina Joanna and the Prince Simeon.
A
substantial number of pushers, tugboats and barges were procured
after the end of World War Two. However, it turned out that
those manned and unmanned barges, tankers, ferryboats, hydro
buses, high speed hydro gliders were not cost-effective on
the Danube River. While over 1 million passengers were transported
on the river in 1956, the local passenger shipping was getting
inefficient and it was finally stopped in 1992. Unlike the
rest of the countries on the Danube, which procure new modern
ships and Danube River shipping makes rapid progress there,
Bulgaria experiences just the opposite processes. The country
used to have 19 river ports, most of them on the routes of
Rousse-Vidin-Rousse, Rousse-Svishtov-Rousse and Rousse-Silistra-Rousse.
Compared
to the post-World War One period when Bulgaria had the smallest
fleet on the Danube River, after World War Two it organised
a big fleet that provides cargo traffic to any port on the
Danube, from Germany to the Ukraine. Any of the four catamarans
named after Bulgarian khans transported 49 lorries per run
from Vidin to Linz and Passau (Germany).
The Interlighter
International Shipping Company with headquarters in Budapest
used to provide river-sea-river liner services from ports
on the Danube River to Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore and the
Mekong River in Vietnam. It is a joint venture of the shipping
companies of Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Ukraine.
A ferryboat operates between Rousse and port Reni in the Ukraine.
Industrial Park Rousse - Layout
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TOTAL
AREA: 63.87 ha
OWNERSHIP: 100% of Municipality of Rousse (Title Deed
- 4390/11.04.05)
MASTER DEVELOPMENT PLAN: available
GEOTECHNICAL SURVEY: available
Legend:
Gas Supply Line (Pressure 0.6 MPa, Pipes o110x6.6 mm
and o250x14.8 mm)
Telecommunications (24 optic fibre cable)
Power Supply Line (110/20 kVa)
Water Supply Line (Capacity 30 L/s, Hydrants on each
100 m)
Road Network
Sewage Lines |
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