Mileștii Mici is a commune in
Ialoveni District
Ialoveni () is a district ( ro, raion) in the central part of Moldova, with the administrative center at Ialoveni.
As of 1 January 2011, its population was 99,100.
History
Localities with the oldest documentary attestation of the district are: ...
,
Moldova
Moldova ( , ; ), officially the Republic of Moldova ( ro, Republica Moldova), is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The unrecognised state of Transnistri ...
, composed of two villages, Mileștii Mici and Piatra Albă. It has a population of over 4,500 and is from
Chişinău. For much of its history, the locals have extracted white stone from underneath the village. Several hundred kilometers of the underground extraction site exist today. Some of the shafts are used as cellars for storing
Milestii Mici wines.
History
Mileștii Mici is an ancient Moldovan village, having been mentioned in ancient books and chronicles. Archeological research has found settlement remains from many different epochs and cultures, beginning in the tenth to eleventh millennium BC.
In 1870,
Emmanuel Brihunet, the priest of "Saint Nikolai" church in Mileștii Mici, discovered some references about the village in old manuscripts, dating from 30 March 1528.
In these early modern chronicles it is mentioned that King
Petru Rares gave his grandson,
Lashko-Voda from
Isnovet, three other villages, two of which were situated around
Isnovet River.
When the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
gained control under
Moldova
Moldova ( , ; ), officially the Republic of Moldova ( ro, Republica Moldova), is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The unrecognised state of Transnistri ...
, there was an order to destroy the wine collection, but the workers made a secret door where they stored the collection.
Wine Cellars
Stretching for , of which only are currently in use, the Mileștii Mici cellar complex is the largest in the world. In 2007, the Mileștii Mici wine cellars were noted in the Guinness World Records 2007 Yearbook, for having the largest (2 million bottles) wine collection in the world.
Related links
www.milestii-mici.md – official website
References
Communes of Ialoveni District
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