of rUral Serbia

SOUTH BANAT
Vršac
Vršac, a town with around 40,000 residents, can be reached
from different directions, by railway or by road. From the west,
there is a very good road from Belgrade to Vršac, and you can get
to this town situated under the Vršac Hill in a little more than
an hour’s drive. From the south, from the Danube, through the
edges of the Deliblato Sands, and via Bela Crkva, the road will
also bring you to this baroque little town on the very border with
the neighbouring Romania. To the north the town is connected
to the Central and North Banat both by road and by railway, and
from the east you can get to Vršac straight from Europe.
The first settlements were made as early as in Neolith, at the
time of polished stone, as we can see from archaeological findings.
Human settlements in the Late Middle Ages gained a more
permanent character with the arrival of Slavic people in these
areas. Upon seeing the hills and mounts of Vršac, the newcomers
changed its old names Podvršac and Podvršan into Verh, or
Vrh, which means the top of the hill in Slavic. Large forests, lakes,
swamps and fertile soil provided excellent conditions for settlement.
A variety of different peoples lived in this place: the Cimmerians,
Celts, Dacians, and then the Romans, who were replaced
by the Sarmatians, followed by the Slavs and Hungarians, and
in 1552 conquered by the Ottomans. When the Ottomans left
in 1717, there was yet another flow of new residents, and with
it came economic and cultural development. With the union of
Serbian and German Vršac in 1794, and especially after obtaining
the market privilege in 1804 and the status of a free royal town,
Vršac became the economic, commercial and cultural centre of
this region.
Walking down the spacious and well aligned streets of Vršac, you
can almost follow its development from the beginnings to the
present day, smell the history of its beautiful houses and churches,
and feel the heartbeat of this old, but still comfortable town.
Viticulture, crafts, sericulture, animal husbandry, agronomy and
highly developed trade have made the townspeople richer, which
is the main precondition for the development of education and
culture.
Among the historical monuments which have survived the centuries,
the most important one is definitely the Tower of Vršac,
which dominates the town, showing the remains of the sometime
town of Vršac built at the end of the 14th and beginning of
the 15th century. The fortification was surrounded by two and a
half meter thick walls, and it had a large three floor tower and a
smaller one. It was built as defence against the Turks, who still
managed to conquer the town in 1552, after which the tower was
left at the mercy of vandals and the ravages of time. It was not
until 1970 that its refurbishment, which lasts to this day, was initiated.
If you climb up the tower, you will have a magnificent view
of Vršac and the surrounding landscape, and this is where you are
bound to meet a great number of people who enjoy flying on a
wide variety of gliders.