Bar (Bar)
Bar began as a small trade outpost known as Rov, within the Duchy of Podolia in the 13th century. Rov was noted for the first time in 1401. In 1537, the Polish Queen Bona Sforza renamed the settlement Bar, after her hometown of Bari, Italy. Bar's highest mountain was renamed after Queen Sforza in 2018 to commemorate her role in naming the town. In 1540, King Sigismund I the Old of Poland granted the nearby town city rights.
In the 1630s, Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan built a fortress in Bar and made note of the town his book Description d'Ukranie. The Bar fortress was besieged several times in its history. In 1648, during the Khmelnytsky Uprising, was captured by Cossacks led by Maxym Kryvonis and was severely damaged.
Bar as a town was described by a number of travelers and historians, including Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan in 1650, Evliya Çelebi in 1656, and Ulrich von Werdum in August 1671.
In 1672, Bar was captured by the Ottoman Empire and became a seat of the sanjak in Podolia Eyalet with nahiyas of Bar, Dırajna, Zinkuv and Popovçi. On November 12, 1674, the town and the fortress were liberated by John III of Poland after a four-day siege. However, the Ottomans would then recapture the city in 1675 and hold it until 1686, with nominal control through 1699.
On February 29, 1768, the Bar Confederation, an alliance of Polish nobles, was founded by Adam Krasiński, Bishop of Kamenets, Karol Stanisław Radziwiłł, Casimir Pulaski, Moritz Benyowszki and Michał Krasiński within the Bar fortress. After the Second Partition of Poland, the town was ceded to the Russian Empire and made part of the Podolia Governorate.
After 1922, Bar became part of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic within the USSR. In 1991, following the fall of the Soviet Union, the town became part of the independent Ukraine.
The town had a historical Jewish population, with 3,869 Jews within the city in 1939. On July 16, 1941, during World War II, Nazi Germany occupied the town and established ghettos, killing many of Bar's Jewish residents. In 1999, there was an estimated Jewish population of 199.
Bar currently has two large memorials situated within the city center, which are dedicated to those killed during WWII.
Map - Bar (Bar)
Map
Country - Ukraine
Flag of Ukraine |
During the Middle Ages, Ukraine was the site of early Slavic expansion and the area later became a key centre of East Slavic culture under the state of Kievan Rus', which emerged in the 9th century. The state eventually disintegrated into rival regional powers and was ultimately destroyed by the Mongol invasions of the 13th century. The area was then contested, divided, and ruled by a variety of external powers for the next 600 years, including the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Tsardom of Russia. The Cossack Hetmanate emerged in central Ukraine in the 17th century, but was partitioned between Russia and Poland, and ultimately absorbed by the Russian Empire. Ukrainian nationalism developed, and following the Russian Revolution in 1917, the short-lived Ukrainian People's Republic was formed. The Bolsheviks consolidated control over much of the former empire and established the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union when it was formed in 1922. In the early 1930s, millions of Ukrainians died in the Holodomor, a man-made famine. During World War II, Ukraine was devastated by the German occupation.
Currency / Language
ISO | Currency | Symbol | Significant figures |
---|---|---|---|
UAH | Ukrainian hryvnia | â‚´ | 2 |
ISO | Language |
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HU | Hungarian language |
PL | Polish language |
RU | Russian language |
UK | Ukrainian language |