Archaeologists discovered the water reservoir of the castle of the Rusokastro fortress

In the last days of Rusokastro's research for 2017, the Burgas archaeologists have discovered the water reservoir of the fortress castle. It is built in the southeast corner of the citadel of the fortress. It has irregular shape with dimensions 15 m long from the west and 12 m from the east, with a width of 8 m and arched northwest corner. In the middle of the reservoir, at the north-south line, two massive stone stairs were built. The facility was covered with an arcade structure, huge pieces of which had fallen inside. In 2018, the heavy debris is expected to be removed by a crane.


The capacity of the reservoir is at least 300 m3. It is protected by the powerful southern and eastern wall with a width of 2.5 m, as well as by a large circular round tower with a diameter of 7 m. The water reservoir had a second floor leading to a four-staircase staircase.

The walls of this monumental facility are carefully plastered with thick hydrophobic (waterproof) mortar plaster. It has a pink color, because it contains a large amount of ground baked ceramics, which in fact provides waterproofing.
The excavations of the Rusokastro Fortress are led by Milen Nikolov and Dorothea Girdziyska from the Regional historical museum Burgas and are funded by Municipality of Kameno, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Bulgaria and National Museum of History.

The processing of the ceramic material, analysis of coin finds and examination of the discovered animal bones by an archaeologist, are still to follow. These tests will be especially curious, because they will make clear what meat ate the medieval Bulgarians and Byzantines in the 13-14 c.

Tags:rusokastro, excavations