Philippopolis (Thrace)

Philippopolis was the ancient Greek name of the city on the site of modern Plovdiv in south central Bulgaria, built across seven hills on the Maritsa River in the historic region of Thrace. It was founded as a polis by Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, who around 342 BC settled Thracians alongside roughly 2,000 Macedonian colonists there, though the site itself had been continuously inhabited since the 6th millennium BC. Under Rome the city became capital of the province of Thracia, and in the Byzantine period it ranked as the third largest city in the empire after Constantinople and Thessalonica.