Ibida Fortress

Ibida Fortress, also called Libida, lies in Slava Rusă village, Slava Cercheză commune, in north-central Dobruja, Tulcea County. The ruins occupy the western part of the village and the land to the west and north-west of it; the town stood on flat ground, with an attached fortification on Harada hill to the south-west. A Getic settlement already existed on the site in the 4th century BC. The first enclosure wall was built during the Principate. Under the Tetrarchy, with changes under Constantine the Great, the great enclosure was built, covering about 24 ha, plus about 3.5 ha for the hilltop fortification. The town is mentioned by Procopius of Caesarea and Theophylact Simocatta. It was attacked by the Goths in the 4th century, by the Kutrigurs in 559 under Justinian, who carried out the most extensive rebuilding, and by Avars and Slavs; it was abandoned in the 7th century. Pamfil Polonic described the ruins in 1897, counting 33 towers and 3 gates, and Vasile Pârvan identified the settlement as Ibida in 1911. Systematic excavations began in 2001, led by the "Gavrilă Simion" Eco-Museum Research Institute of Tulcea together with the "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iași and, since 2013, the Italian Archaeological Mission of the University of Sassari. Several sections of the late Roman wall, towers, a gate, streets and monuments have been uncovered, along with about 200 graves of the 2nd to 6th centuries and, a few dozen metres north of the wall, an early Christian church outside the walls. The excavated wall sections and towers can be seen on the western edge of the village. Also in Slava Rusă, the tomb of the Tudorka family, discovered in 2001, is a separate historic monument (TL-I-m-A-21048), and about 2 km south-west of the village are the ruins of an early Christian monastic complex (TL-I-s-A-05927). Ibida Fortress is a category A historic monument, LMI code TL-I-s-A-05926 (RAN code 161277.01), dated to the 4th to 6th centuries AD, the Roman-Byzantine period. Did you know that three Roman military diplomas bearing the same date, 14 August 99, were found on the same site?