 Archeological findings suggest that the first fortified town in the territory of present-day Dnipro probably dates to the mid-16th century.Known as Ekaterinoslav ( ; ) until 1925, the city was formally inaugurated by the Russian Empress Catherine the Great ( - hence its then name) in 1787 as the administrative centre of the newly-acquired vast territories of imperial "New Russia", including those ceded to Russia by the Ottoman Empire under the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774).Grigory Potemkin originally envisioned the city as the Russian Empire's third capital city, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg.