1.The Fortress on the Sheltered Bay
The fortress of Varna, set on a sheltered bay, was important in every age. In the Middle Ages the coastal road passed through it, and from the city ran the road to Marcianopolis (Devnya), Shumen, Veliki Preslav and Tarnovo, branching north towards Cherven and Drastar and south towards Aytos and Develt or towards Vize and Constantinople. The Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi, who visited in 1656, describes a fortress on the seashore with a square plan some 3,000 paces round, with stout walls, crenellations, loopholes and four corner towers.
2.Between the Asens and Byzantium (1190–1201)
In the first years of the war of independence Varna changed hands. Around 1190 the Byzantines recovered Varna and Anchialos, rebuilt their walls and towers and garrisoned them strongly. In 1191 or 1192, however, the Bulgarians reappeared on the coast and took first Varna and then Anchialos. The city was soon returned to the empire and remained the last Byzantine fortress north of the Balkan range.
3.Kaloyan's Assault (1201)
In 1201, while Alexios III Angelos was busy with rebels in the Rhodopes and Macedonia, Kaloyan took the fortress of Constantia in Thrace, then crossed north and turned his forces against Varna. He offered the defenders terms of surrender but met a scornful refusal. The tsar then brought up a great four-sided siege tower on wheels, as tall as the battlements: from its top storey a bridge like a trunk dropped onto the wall, so that the one machine served both as a bridge over the ditch and as a ladder. According to Choniates the city was taken in three days.
The reckoning was savage. Varna fell on Good Friday and Kaloyan, heedless of the feast, had his prisoners thrown into the ditch and buried alive under earth, and on Easter Sunday he levelled the city walls. With the capture of Varna the last Byzantine city in the lands north of the Balkan range was freed, and the peace concluded that same year confirmed Bulgaria's gains in Thrace and Macedonia.
4.Under the Blows of Michael Glabas (1279)
During Ivaylo's rising the Byzantine commander Michael Glabas Tarchaneiotes began his offensive from the sea. Having taken the fortress of Kalata (Galata) and then Varna, he created a bridgehead with its rear secured by the fleet — Ivaylo had no ships, while Byzantine vessels could bring in reinforcements and food. From here Glabas marched on Tarnovo by the road through Provadia, Shumen and Preslav.
5.The Grain Port (Fourteenth Century)
In the fourteenth century Varna became one of the busiest ports on the Black Sea. The Venetians had traded along the Bulgarian coast since the late thirteenth century and had colonies at Varna, Mesembria, Anchialos and Sozopol, and a treaty of 1346–1347 regulated their relations with Tsar Ivan Alexander. Varna became the main port where Venetian ships called, loading chiefly grain and wax.
The Genoese were here too. In February 1317 the government of Genoa forbade its merchants to bring grain from Varna and Anchialos to Constantinople while the two cities were under siege. A papal bull of 1318 extended the diocese of the Catholic bishop of Kaffa "from the city of Varna in Bulgaria to Sarai". In the late 1340s, after the great plague, grain shipments from the Crimea and from Varna saved Constantinople and the Thracian cities from famine.
6.Amadeus of Savoy and the Despots of the Dobruja (1366–1388)
In the autumn of 1366 Count Amadeus VI of Savoy set out with 14 ships against the Bulgarian coast to force Ivan Alexander to release Emperor John V, held up at Vidin. The Savoyards quickly took Agathopolis, Sozopol and Skafida, on 21 October Anchialos and Mesembria, and on 25 October they laid siege to Varna. Here their luck ran out: the city held, and only then did negotiations begin, in which Dobrotitsa played an important part.
As a reward for his mediation Dobrotitsa received Varna, Emona and Kozyak, and perhaps Drastar. The southern half of the coast, with Mesembria, Anchialos and Sozopol, went to Byzantium, while the central and northern part — Emona, Varna, Kavarna and Kaliakra — remained in the despotate of the Dobruja. With this Tarnovo lost its outlet to the sea for good. Around 1385 Dobrotitsa was succeeded by his son Ivanko, who in 1387 concluded a treaty with Genoa granting the Genoese broad privileges.
In 1388 Ali Pasha's Ottoman army, having taken Shumen and Provadia, stumbled before Varna. The attack on the city was not seriously organised and the Turks did not enter the despot Ivanko's lands — the end of Varna as a Bulgarian port came a few years later, together with that of the whole despotate of the Dobruja.