Dnipro City Day is celebrated on the second Saturday of September, however, usually the first celebrations take place the day before. However, the Dnipro does not have an exact date of foundation. The city has been keeping records since 1776. In fact, according to historians, the city is more ancient and was founded during the times of Kyivan Rus.
According to legend, as early as the 9th century, Greek monks founded a monastery on Monastirsky Island, which is evidenced by the name of this island. And also, according to legend, Princess Olga on her way to Tsargorod and Prince Volodymyr stopped on this island during the campaign to Korsun.
A large Old Russian settlement also existed on Igren Island. It was here that the last crossing over the Dnipro before the rapids took place. It is interesting that somewhere in this area in the winter of 972, Kyiv prince Svyatoslav the Brave died at the hands of the Polovtsy. The Igren settlement had every chance to become a big city, but with the Tatar-Mongol invasion in the 13th century, life in these places was interrupted for several centuries. And it began to recover only with the beginning of Cossack rule.
In the 16th century within the boundaries of the modern city of Dnipro, there was a Cossack settlement of Samar, which was a trade center, a customs city near the crossing of the Samara River. It was there that the trade routes from the left-bank Ukraine to the Crimea and the east crossed.
Later, with the strengthening of Russian expansion on the left bank of Ukraine, Cossack settlements, in particular the city of Samar, gradually turned into military fortifications. Thus, in 1688, under the leadership of Hetman Ivan Mazepa, the Mother of God fortress was built here, which for a long time was an outpost against the Crimean Tatars.
In 1775, the Azov Governorate was created in the south-east of Ukraine. And, of course, she needed an administrative center. The city of Katerynoslav, now Dnipro, was to become such a center.
In 1776, the first Katerynoslav began to be built near the town of Samar on the Kilchen River. However, in 1784, the provincial center was moved to the right bank of the Dnieper. It is interesting that the city was not built “from scratch” there either. The basis for it were the Cossack settlements and hamlets – Lotsmanska Kamianka, Polovytsia, Diivka, Mandrykivka, Sukhachivka, Taromske. A few decades later, the new city – then Katerinoslav – became the administrative center of the large territories of the Black Sea steppes and the Crimean Khanate captured by the Russian Empire.
Even now, Dnipro is an important political, industrial, financial, scientific and cultural center of Ukraine. It is a city of regional importance, the administrative center of the Dnipropetrovsk region. And also the city with the longest embankment in Europe and the shortest subway in the world, the city with the longest residential building in Ukraine and the largest arch bridge in Europe. An outpost city, a city of extremely bright people.
Source: UKRINFORM