A gold coin unearthed at the site of a medieval fortress in Bulgaria indicates the wealth of the people who lived there during the early years of Ottoman Turkish rule, according to archaeologists.
A team from the Rousse Regional Museum of History found the coin earlier this year during excavations at the village of Cherven, near the Danube river and Bulgaria's northern border with Romania. It appears to be from the Byzantine Empire, and other coins like it are sometimes attributed to John III Doukas Vatatzes, who was the emperor of Nicaea — a Byzantine successor state — from 1222 until 1254.
