The locality is mentioned for the first time by Constantin Porfirogenetul in 950 A.D. with the name Salinas. The settlement is registered by many documents as Selinas or Solina.

Sulina, the Romanian most eastern settlement, has a special history.

At the end of the XV century, in the period of the Ottoman domination, the Turks build a redoubt in Sulina. Then they found the headquarters of regency and install a military garrison. At the end of XVIII century and the beginning of the next one, the Russian -Turkish wars determined an economical decline and on the social and administrative sides they determined the piracy development simultaneously with the increasing of uncertainty feeling.

In 1856, the Paris Peace Congress decided the creation of the Danube’s European Commission, which foundation determined the locality’s transformation into an important town with a flourishing economy, based on commerce and navigation.

The arrangements made at the Danube’s European Commission initiative, after 1857 on Sulina branch, based on the projects of the engineer Charles Hartley, allowed a navigability adequate state and the development of Sulina harbour, which became in this way the most important harbour from the Occidental part of the Black Sea and beginning with 1870 was the first free port in Romania. Simultaneously, the town knows a special urbane transformation due to the elevation of important buildings. At the end of XIX century and the beginning of the XX century, in the locality from the Danube’s mouths, 8 consular representations, buildings of numerous navigation companies, Post Office, telephone, the Danube’s European Commission Palace which dominated the sea wall, the power station, the water works, two hospitals, the theatre, the printing works, a hotel and over 100 shops were existing.

Regarding the ethnical aspect, Sulina constituted itself into a cosmopolitan town. Greeks, Romanians, Russians, Armenians, Turks, Jews, Albanians, Germans, Italians, French, English etc. populated the locality in the seven centuries of Danube’s European Commission existence here, the cults of the majority benefiting by schools and cult buildings of their own.

The tragedy of the First World War determined on one side the economical stagnation due to the stopping of commerce and on the other side determined the destruction of most of the town’s buildings. The locality remained almost uninhabited.

In 1937, Danube’s European Commission was repealed. Members of the communities which were directly dependent of this commission repatriated. Cosmopolitan life in Sulina ceased its existence.

During the Second World War, the town was strongly bombed. Many buildings were destroyed or disappeared for ever. More, the town entered into the big restriction of the “borders zones”. The commercial activities were restrained, most part of the refugees never came back; the economical life was reduced at fishing and manufacture. During the communist period, nor the industrialisation politic, nor the reorganization of the free-port didn’t manage to reactivate the Sulina’s urbane life.