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Rousse (Ruse)- Culture |
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This
key position has determined the nineteen century long co-existence of
town, river, and people, carrying the unique atmosphere of history as a
precious heritage, and of future as an open road full of promises. The
Romans were the first to build the fort which they called Sexaginta Prista
(the port of sixty ships). Then came others, from Europe, leaving their
indelible imprint in this intersection of material and spiritual culture,
followed by the imbued with the zeal of drive and enterprise Bulgarians,
who gradually turned the place into a centre of the Bulgarian national
revival. The very name Rousse became a synonym of economic growth and
cultural rebirth. The
nineteenth century saw here the opening of the first Bulgarian printing
house, the first model farm, the first Bulgarian railroad connecting
Rousse with Varna, the first Bulgarian weather service, the first
technical school and technical society, the first professional teachers'
club, the first insurance agency, the first chamber of commerce and
industry, the first inland navigation service on the Danube, the first
telephone, the first moving picture show, the first Bulgarian newspaper,
the first map of geography.
The town hosted a vast variety of multinational ethnic groups which the Nobel writer Ellias Canetty defined as a microcosmos of two dozen nationalities. French, German, Italian, Jewish, Armenian, Turkish, and other schools, boarding houses and churches, reading clubs, theatres and music halls, museums and bookshops, opened their doors to help diversify the cultural life of the city in its steady march towards enlightenment. in this completed picture of social life, today the town is still rediscovering its true face, spanning a bridge across cultures in the new context of integrated Europe. |
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Rousse,
also spelled RUSSE, or ROUSSΙ, city of northern Bulgaria, on the
Danube River near the mouth of the Rusenski Lom. Bulgaria's principal
river port and a transportation hub for road and rail, Ruse has regular
shipping services on the Danube and an airport. Upstream is the Friendship
Bridge, built in 1954, carrying road and rail traffic across the river to
Giurgiu, in Romania. Rousse is an industrial town, with an oil refinery,
railway car and locomotive works, textile mills, and plants for food
processing and the production of agricultural machinery, leather goods,
ceramics, and other consumer goods. The harbour is cut in the Danube
alluvial plain at the foot of low bluffs.
Rousse
is the biggest Bulgarian port town on the bank of the river Danube. After
the opening of the Rhein - Main - Danube canal which covers 3,500 km and
connects thirteen European countries with the Near and Far East via the
Black Sea, the river becomes the longest inland waterway on the planet.
New
industries sprang up, banks and trade agencies were founded and European
shipping agencies, as well as 17 foreign consulates were established. A
large number of Bulgarian, Austrian, Italian, and Swiss men of art created
the wealth of architectural forms and styles characteristic of the period
in Europe: neoclassicism, neobaroque, neogothic style, art nouveau, and
fin du siecle.