Vidin

Vidin is a port city on the southern bank of the Danube in north-western Bulgaria, close to the borders with Romania and Serbia. It is the administrative centre of Vidin Province and the seat of the Metropolitan of Vidin, a bishopric recorded since 870. The site grew from an old Celtic settlement called Dunonia, a name meaning fortified hill, and the Romans built the fort of Bononia here on the Danube frontier, around which a town developed in the province of Upper Moesia. In the Middle Ages Vidin was an important Bulgarian city, and under the Shishman dynasty and later Ivan Stratsimir it was the seat of the Tsardom of Vidin, a de facto independent realm, until the Ottomans took it in 1396. Its main landmark is the Baba Vida fortress, built between the tenth and fourteenth centuries. The Vidin-Calafat bridge, opened in 2013, replaced the ferry link to Romania. The population peaked above 65,000 around 1988 to 1991 and stood at 35,784 in 2021.