History of Rostov-on-Don

Rostov-on-Don began not with fortress walls or a monastery, but with a customs house at a river mouth. On December 15, 1749, Empress Elizabeth Petrovna signed a decree establishing the Temernik Customs — at the time the only Russian port in the south, through which trade was conducted with the countries of the Black, Aegean, and Mediterranean seas. The site was chosen at the point where the small Temernik River flows into the Don, near an ancient spring known as the “Bogaty Kolodez” (Rich Well): here, during the Azov campaigns, Peter I had stopped, appreciating the strength and taste of the local water. Already by the spring of 1750, a wharf, a warehouse, a quarantine facility, and a garrison barracks had been built on the shore — around this business hub a large trading settlement gradually grew.

The Fortress of St. Dimitry of Rostov

The southern frontiers of the Russian Empire remained a zone of constant tension throughout the 18th century. In 1761, by decree of Elizabeth Petrovna, construction began on the earthen Fortress of St. Dimitry of Rostov. It was named after Dimitry Tuptalo, Metropolitan of Rostov and Yaroslavl, who had been canonized in 1757. Thus, the “Rostov” name appeared on the banks of the Don, having no direct connection to the ancient Rostov the Great.

The fortress was built according to the rules of 18th-century military engineering: nine polygonal bastions surrounded by ramparts and a moat, garrison barracks, storehouses, and a cathedral church. The structure protected the trading settlement, controlled the movements of nomads along the Tatar and Nogai routes, and kept the lower reaches of the Don under watch, coming close to the Turkish fortress of Azov.

Around the garrison, a forshtadt quickly grew — a settlement of craftsmen, merchants, and fishermen that became the center of local life. However, by the end of the 18th century, the military significance of the fortress declined: the empire’s borders had moved far to the south, toward the Caucasus and the Kuban. In 1796, the settlement adjoining the fortress was transformed into a town, and in 1802 it became a district center of the Yekaterinoslav Governorate.

The name “Rostov-on-Don” — with the qualifier “on Don” distinguishing it from Rostov the Great — was finally established for the city in the first decades of the 19th century. The fortress itself was abolished by the 1830s, its ramparts leveled, and later gardens were laid out and residential blocks built on the former bastions. It is now recalled by Krepostnoy Lane and Bogatyanovsky Descent.

Armenian Nakhichevan

In 1778–1779, following the transformation of the Crimean Khanate into a Russian vassal, General Alexander Suvorov led about 12,600 Armenians out of the peninsula and resettled them on the Lower Don. By decree of Catherine II of November 14, 1779, the settlers were allotted 86,000 desyatinas of fertile land, granted a ten-year exemption from taxes, and given the right to build a town and five villages.

Thus, alongside the Fortress of St. Dimitry, New Nakhichevan appeared — an independent Armenian town with its own magistrate, churches, and a distinctive regular grid of “lines” instead of the usual streets. To the north of the town, on a rise above the Temernik, the Surb Khach Monastery was built in 1786–1792 — the oldest surviving building within the current boundaries of Rostov.

For a century and a half, Rostov and Nakhichevan developed side by side, separated only by a vacant lot, on the site of which Theater Avenue later ran. These were two distinct worlds with different ways of life, languages, and traditions, which over time merged into a single metropolis.

The Merchant City of the 19th Century

The 19th century transformed Rostov from a provincial district town into one of the largest ports and industrial centers of the empire’s south. Already by the 1830s, tanneries, tallow works, and flour mills were operating here, and barges laden with grain, wool, and fish were heading down the Don.

The real leap forward began with the arrival of the railway. In 1868, a branch line from the Grushevka coal mines was extended to the Rostov wharf. In 1869, service was opened from Kharkov and Taganrog, in 1871 — from Voronezh, and on July 14, 1875, the Rostov–Vladikavkaz Railway began operating with the first drawbridge across the Don and a large new station. The city became a key hub where roads from the Caucasus, the Volga region, and Central Russia converged.

Following the railway came banks, insurance companies, grain offices, the Paramonov mills, tobacco factories, and boiler works. According to the 1897 census, the city already had a population of 119,476. Foreign merchants — Greeks, Armenians, English, and Germans — settled on Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, shaping the cosmopolitan character of the city. Eclectic and Art Nouveau apartment buildings, columned banks, and trading arcades sprang up in the center. The spiritual center became Cathedral Square with the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, built to the design of Konstantin Ton.

In 1887, the city’s administrative status finally caught up with its economic power: Rostov was removed from the Yekaterinoslav Governorate and included in the Don Host Oblast with its center in Novocherkassk. Thus, the merchant city legally entered the Cossack land to which it had always physically belonged.

Revolution and the Great Patriotic War

The beginning of the 20th century found Rostov-on-Don a bustling, socially diverse city, where the merchant way of life coexisted with powerful industry. In December 1905, one of the most stubborn armed uprisings in the country broke out here: workers of the railway workshops in Temernik openly rose against the authorities. After February 1917 and the Bolshevik coup, Rostov went through the bloody upheaval of the Civil War.

Power in the city changed rapidly: control passed from the Reds to the Don Cossack government and the Volunteer Army, and in the winter of 1917–1918 Rostov and Novocherkassk became, in essence, the starting point of the White movement. The final establishment of Soviet power took place in January 1920, when units of the 1st Cavalry Army entered the city.

Already under Soviet rule, on December 28, 1928, an event took place that set the city’s present boundaries: neighboring Nakhichevan-on-Don, which had lived separately for a century and a half, was merged with Rostov. The Armenian town became the Proletarsky District, and Nakhichevan’s linear layout has survived to this day and is easily read on the map: 1st, 2nd, and subsequent “lines” instead of streets.

In 1937, after the division of the Azov–Black Sea Krai, Rostov-on-Don was made the center of the new Rostov Oblast. In the 1930s the city rapidly industrialized: in 1930 the giant Rostselmash plant produced its first output, in the middle of the decade the railway station was rebuilt, and workers’ settlements on the northern outskirts expanded.

The Great Patriotic War passed through Rostov twice. German troops approached the city in the autumn of 1941. On November 21, 1941, units of Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army broke into Rostov, but were unable to hold it. Already on November 29, Soviet forces of the Southern Front, after a short but stubborn battle, drove the enemy back beyond the Mius. This liberation became one of the first successful offensive operations of the Red Army in the war.

In the summer of 1942, during the German offensive toward the Caucasus, the tragedy was repeated. On July 24, Rostov fell, and this time the occupation lasted a long 205 days. In August 1942, a terrible tragedy took place in the Zmievskaya Balka: German punitive forces and their collaborators shot about 27,000 people, predominantly Jews of Rostov and Nakhichevan. This became the largest single act of the Holocaust on the territory of the RSFSR. Final liberation came on February 14, 1943, when units of the 28th and 51st Armies entered the ruined and half-burned city.

From Postwar Reconstruction to the Present Day

After the end of the Great Patriotic War, Rostov lay in ruins: about 12,000 buildings had been destroyed, including most of the industrial enterprises and the historic center. In terms of the scale of destruction, the city was among the ten most severely damaged in the country. Reconstruction continued throughout the 1940s and 1950s: the Gorky Theater, the Rostselmash plant, the railway station, and the city embankment were rebuilt. In recognition of the feat of the people of Rostov, the honorary title “City of Military Glory” was conferred on the city in 2008.

In the postwar decades, Rostov quickly regained its status as a key industrial and transportation hub of the South of Russia. In the 1960s–1980s, the city expanded significantly: large residential districts appeared — Zapadny, Severny, and Aleksandrovka — and the architectural face of the Don was adorned by the Voroshilovsky Bridge and the renovated embankment. By the time of the collapse of the USSR, Rostov’s population exceeded one million.

The post-Soviet period was marked by the city’s return to its historical role — that of a major trading and logistics center laid down in the imperial era. Today the city hosts a river port, the headquarters of the North Caucasus Railway, agricultural and machine-building enterprises, and the Southern Federal University.

An important milestone in modern history was the 2018 FIFA World Cup. For the tournament, the Rostov Arena stadium was built on the left bank of the Don, the embankment was reconstructed, and in 2017 the modern Platov Airport was opened 33 kilometers from the city. Thus historic Rostov on the right bank stepped seriously across the river for the first time, onto the left bank, which until recently had been considered a dacha and beach outskirt.

Today’s Rostov-on-Don is a city of a million, with a population of about 1.14 million people, the capital of the region of the same name and one of the administrative centers of the Southern Federal District. Over three centuries the city has come a long way from a customs post at the Rich Well to a “southern capital,” where the merchant 19th century coexists with Armenian Nakhichevan, Soviet residential districts, and modern recreational spaces on the left bank of the Don.