Kozloduy

Kozloduy ( ) is a town in northwest Bulgaria, located in Vratsa Province, on the Danube River. The city was liberated from Ottoman rule on 23 November 1877 by the Romanian Army under the command of the Imperial Russian Army. Kozloduy is best known for the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant, Bulgaria's only (as of January 2018) nuclear power plant, which is located nearby, as well as the second-largest Bulgarian Danubian island, Kozloduy Island. The city is also known for the ship Radetzky, the boat in which the poet and revolutionary Hristo Botev and with 200 others crossed the Danube River in a final attempt to gather an army and liberate Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire. History The earliest official data show that Kozloduy was populated in the 16th century. It is in the burial mounds where traces of a Thracian dwelling center that existed in the first millennium BC remain. Later on the big Roman roadway along the Danube passed through these places. The remains of the Roman castella (i.e. castles) Magura piatra (or Regianum), Camistrum and Augusta testify to this. In this region there are three historic trenches which were later called Lomski, Ostrovski and Kozloduiski where a military garrison of Khan Asparukh was placed. In the 18th century the settlement was marked as Kotozluk and Kozludere ("a low coomb") and later Kozloduy ("an angle of ice blocks"). On 17 May 1876 Hristo Botev's detachment landed at Kozloduy on the Radetski steamer. On 23 November 1877 the 8th cavalry regiment under Commander Alexandru Perets liberated Kozloduy from the Ottomans. This cavalry was part of the Romanian Forces under the command of the Russian Imperial Army. Construction of Kozloduy actually started with the construction of the first Nuclear Electric Power Station, which was started on 6 April 1970.