Histria, Greek colony on the Dobrudja coast of the Black Sea (today on the Sinoe Lake bank), was founded by the middle of the 7th century BC, by colonists from Miletus (according to the data conveyed by Eusebius, a possible founding date could be the years 657/656 BC, and according to the tradition mentioned by Ps. - Skymnos, the year 630 BC could represent the date of the foundation of the settlement) and existed for 14 centuries, until the 7th century AD. It is the oldest Greek colony on the west coast of the Black Sea, and one of the first founded in the basin of this sea. It is also the oldest town attested on the territory of present day Romania.

After having been identified, in 1868, by French archaeologist Ernest Desjardins, the settlement has been widely researched by Vasile Pârvan (1914 - 1927), Scarlat and Marcelle Lambrino (1928 - 1943), and after 1949 by a team of archaeologists led successively by Emil Condurachi (1949 - 1970), and Dionisie M. Pippidi.

The researches are going on nowadays under the leadership of Professor Petre Alexandrescu and Professor Alexandru Suceveanu. 1999 marks 85 years of uninterrupted researches at Histria.