Road station
Mesembria
Nesebur · Nesebar
Mesembria is Nesebar, built on a small rocky peninsula in the Black Sea, joined to the mainland by a narrow neck of land. It was a Doric Greek colony, founded either in 512 or in 493 BC by settlers from Byzantium and Chalcedon or from Megara, and it grew rich from trade and iron mines, striking its own coins from the fifth century BC. In 72 BC it surrendered to the Roman general Lucullus. Declining under Rome, it flourished again in Byzantine times, with new churches and a bishop, and passed for good to the Turks only in 1453.