Sulina

A Byzantine emperor, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, is the first to name Sulina, and by the 14th century it was a small Genoese port of sailors, pirates and fishermen, marked on Italian sea charts. In the 18th century the Ottomans built a lighthouse here, when the Sulina branch had become the most easily navigable route between Constantinople and the Danubian principalities, the capital's main breadbaskets. The Treaty of Adrianople of 1829 opened the Danube grain trade, and Sulina, then under Russian control, became an important port: big sailing ships could not reach Brăila and Galați fully loaded through the shallow river, so cargoes were moved here into small riverboats, nearly all owned and crewed by Greeks.

The Treaty of Paris of 1856, which ended the Crimean War, created the European Commission of the Danube, which deepened the river mouth so that large ships could enter. The Commission turned a fishing village into a town and built its palace between 1860 and 1868, and in 1870 the Ottoman authorities declared Sulina a free port. After the Russo-Turkish war of 1877–78 the town passed to Romania with the rest of Dobruja; an estimate of 1878 counted about 800 people, Greeks, Turks, Romanians, Old Believers and others. The writer Eugeniu Botez, who wrote as Jean Bart, served as captain of the port and set his novel Europolis there.

In the First World War the Romanian cruiser Elisabeta was based here and kept the delta in Romanian hands. In the Second World War, according to the town's lighthouse museum, more than 80 per cent of the town was destroyed by Soviet bombing. Sulina later became a small fishing town and seaside resort, still reached only by boat.

Sulina's identity is its cosmopolitan past. In 1930 fewer than half its people were Romanians, beside Greeks, Lipovans, Serbs, Turks, Jews and Germans, and the town's cemetery, with Christian, Muslim and Jewish sections and graves of 21 nationalities, is the clearest record of that town. Jean Bart's Europolis gave it a literary name, and his study is kept in the old lighthouse.

Today most people are Romanian and Orthodox, with a community of Lipovans, the Russian-speaking Old Believers whose ancestors settled in Dobruja in the 17th and 18th centuries, and smaller numbers of Ukrainians and Greeks. The cathedral of St Alexander and St Nicholas stands on the riverfront, and there is also a Roman Catholic church of St Nicholas.

Life follows the river and the seasons. Boats arrive and leave from the promenade, and in summer the beach bar and a nearby club draw crowds at night, while the far stretches of sand stay empty enough for birds, wild horses and nude bathers. The town is Romania's easternmost and lowest-lying, at about 4 metres above sea level.

About 3,100 people lived in Sulina at the 2021 census, down from about 3,700 in 2011. Roughly four in five are Romanians, with Lipovans the largest minority. The town is run by a mayor and a council of 13; Maria Bălan of the Social Democratic Party has been mayor since November 2024.

It is a small fishing town and summer resort. Most homes stand on the right bank in a long strip along the river, with a smaller settlement on the left bank. The land around is sandy, salty and crossed by canals, with reeds in the marshy parts and almost no large trees outside the town.

Everything arrives by water. Shopping is done at one large supermarket on the promenade and a few small shops, the banks close at weekends, and the boats to Tulcea are the link with the rest of the country. Summer brings visitors and full guesthouses; out of season the town is quiet.

Fish is the base of the table, from the river and the delta's lakes — carp, pike, zander and wels catfish among them. Saramură, a traditional dish made especially with fish in Dobruja, is fish grilled, sometimes on a bed of salt, then soaked or sprinkled with brine or a brine-based sauce; the Lipovans call it rassol, and saramură de crap, carp in brine, is a classic. It is usually served with vegetables or mămăligă, the yellow maize-flour porridge eaten across Romania.

Fish soup is the other staple. Romanian borș is a sour liquid made from fermented wheat or barley bran, and soups made with it can be cooked with fish, flavoured with lovage. A home-cooked meal in Sulina usually brings fish soup, grilled fish and traditional Romanian side dishes.

The fish market on the left bank sells the morning's catch to locals and to visitors who cross early on the little boat. In town, a number of restaurants serve meals, while the supermarket and a butcher's shop supply everything else.