Colentina is a neighborhood in Bucharest's Sector 2. It is located on the north-east of the city and is named after the nearby Colentina River. Name A local folk etymology says that the name is derived from "colea-n-tină" (there, in the mud), this being the answer given by a spătar to Matei Basarab, who asked the former where he had defeated the Ottoman army. History Early history Until the second half of the 18th century, the area of today's Colentina was forested, as it was on the map of Stolnic Constantin Cantacuzino. Nevertheless, archeologists found traces of small settlements in Colentina, dated from the 6th-7th century; in one of such settlements, archeologists found a Justinian-era Byzantine bronze coin dated 539. Monastery estate The village of Colentina located near the Plumbuita Monastery was first mentioned on the map of H. C. Schütz of 1780 and on I. F. Schmidt's 1788 map. An Austrian map of 1791 shows the village as being located at the crossroad of the routes leading to Fundeni, Afumați, Ștefănești, and Pipera, with the high road bound for Bucharest. The earliest houses were built at the crossroad and around the Cârstienești Bridge across the Colentina river, close to the gate of the monastery. Soon after, the Plumbuita Monastery, which owned the land in Colentina built and rented (embatic) grocer's shops, pubs, inns, as well as agricultural land. In the early 19th century, among the renters was the Paharnic Andronache Teohari, whose name was given to the Andronache estate in Northern Colentina, the name being still in use today. The houses were built especially along the road towards Bucharest, while the houses on the island of the monastery were still spread out. Due to this, in 1837, the ocârmuitor of Ilfov County asked the hegumen of the monastery to donate plots for the peasants on the domains to build their houses according to a plan. The people who settled in Colentina were a heterogenous mix: some were Romanians from across Wallachia, others were Greeks, Bulgarians or Serbs. During the 1821 revolts that preceded the Greek War of Independence, Alexander Ypsilantis and the Filiki Eteria, coming from Moldavia settled on the field on the Bucharest-ward bank of Colentina. The same place was used for the consecration of the flags of the first national militia in 1830 and the place where the first soldiers of the National Army took their oath