Description:
Târgovişte, the capital of Wallachia for many centuries, would undergo, towards the end of the Middle Ages, a vast process of economic and political transformations. Bucharest having taken over its role as capital hastened the decline of the city, which had been abandoned by the important noblemen of the country ; the administrative authority also fell and with it its autonomy ; its fairs, emblems of the foreign trade, were dissolved or moved and the population was decimated by the numerous military conflicts of the 17th-18th centuries. All this was fragmentarily recorded by documents, which is why another original source to identify the realities mentioned above is represented by the testimonials left by foreign travellers whose accounts became ampler and more accurate as we were approaching the modern times.