CHILIA, a town of Bessarabia, Rumania, in the Department of Ismail, and on the Chilia branch of the Danube. Pop. (1930), 17,050. Chilia is a small fishing centre and port of some his torical interest. Anciently known as Chilia, Chele or Lycostom ium, it was a place of banishment for Byzantine political digni taries in the 12th-13th centuries, a Genoese trading settlement 1381-1403, then Wallachian, Moldavian and Hungarian, and taken by Turkey in 1484. Under the Turks it was a strong fortress, with a largely Tatar population. It was taken by Russia in 1812.