Place:Novi Sad, Vojvodina, Serbia, Serbia and Montenegro

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Novi Sad (; , ; ; see below for other names) is the second largest city in Serbia and the capital of the autonomous province of Vojvodina. It is located in the southern portion of the Pannonian Plain on the border of the Bačka and Syrmia geographical regions. Lying on the banks of the Danube river, the city faces the northern slopes of Fruška Gora.

, Novi Sad proper has a population of 250,439 while its urban area (including the adjacent settlements of Petrovaradin and Sremska Kamenica) comprises 277,522 inhabitants. The population of the administrative area of the city totals 341,625 people.

Novi Sad was founded in 1694 when Serb merchants formed a colony across the Danube from the Petrovaradin Fortress, a strategic Habsburg military post. In subsequent centuries, it became an important trading, manufacturing and cultural centre, and has historically been dubbed the Serbian Athens. The city was heavily devastated in the 1848 Revolution, but was subsequently rebuilt and restored. Today, along with the Serbian capital city of Belgrade, Novi Sad is an industrial and financial center important to the Serbian economy.

Novi Sad is the European Capital of Culture for the year 2022 and was the European Youth Capital in 2019.

History

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Older settlements

Human habitation in the territory of present-day Novi Sad has been traced as far back as the Stone Age. Several settlements and necropolises dating to 5000 BC were unearthed during the construction of a new boulevard in Avijatičarsko Naselje. A settlement was also identified on the right bank of the river Danube in present-day Petrovaradin.

In antiquity, the region was inhabited by Celtic tribes, most notably the Scordisci. Celts were present in the area since the 4th century BC and founded the first fortress on the right bank of the Danube. Later, in the 1st century BC, the region was conquered by the Romans. During Roman rule, a larger fortress was built in the 1st century, with the name Cusum, and was included in the Roman province of Pannonia.

In the 5th century, Cusum was devastated by Hunnic invasions. By the end of the same century, the Byzantines had reconstructed the town and called it by the names Petrikon or Petrikov after Saint Peter. Slavic tribes such as the Severians, the Obotrites and the Serbs (including the subtribes of the Braničevci and the Timočani) settled today's region around Novi Sad mainly in the 6th and 7th centuries.^[1] The Serbs absorbed the aforementioned Slavic groups as well as the Paleo-Balkanic peoples of the region.^[1]

In the Middle Ages, the area was subsequently controlled by the Ostrogoths, Gepids, Avars, Franks, West Slavic groups, again by the Byzantines, and finally by the Hungarians. It became a part of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary between the 11th and 12th centuries. Hungarians began to settle in the area, which before that time was mostly populated by Slavs, and the place was first mentioned under the Hungarian variant Peturwarad or Pétervárad (Serbian: Petrovaradin/Петроварадин), which derived from the Byzantine variant, found in documents from 1237. That same year, several other settlements were mentioned as existing in the territory of modern-day urban Novi Sad.

From the 13th century to the 16th century, the following settlements existed within the territory of the urban areas of modern-day Novi Sad:

• on the right bank of the Danube: Pétervárad (Serbian: Petrovaradin) and Kamanc (Serbian: Kamenica).
• on the left bank of the Danube: Baksa or Baksafalva, Kűszentmárton, Bivalyos or Bivalo, Vásárosvárad or Várad, Zajol I (Serbian: Sajlovo I, Gornje Sajlovo, Gornje Isailovo), Zajol II (Serbian: Sajlovo II, Donje Sajlovo, Donje Isailovo), Bistritz (Serbian: Bistrica). Some other settlements existed in the suburbs of Novi Sad: Mortályos (Serbian: Mrtvaljoš), Csenei, Keménd (Serbian: Kamendin), Rév.

An etymology of settlement names reveals that some designations are of Slavic origin, which indicates that the areas were initially inhabited by Slavs, particularly the West Slavs. For example, Bivalo (Bivaljoš) was a large Slavic settlement dating from the 5th–6th centuries.^[2] Other names are of Hungarian origin (for example Bélakút, Kűszentmárton, Vásárosvárad, Rév), indicating that the settlements were inhabited by Hungarians before the Ottoman invasion in the 16th century.^[3] Some settlement names are of uncertain origin.

Tax records from 1522 show a mix of Hungarian and Slavic names among the inhabitants of these villages, including Slavic names like Bozso (Božo), Radovan, Radonya (Radonja), Ivo, etc. Following the Ottoman invasion in the 16th–17th centuries, some of these settlements were destroyed. Most of the surviving Hungarian inhabitants retreated from the area. Some of the settlements persisted during the Ottoman rule and were populated by ethnic Serbs.

Between 1526 and 1687, the region was under Ottoman rule. In the year 1590, the population of all villages that existed in the territory of present-day Novi Sad numbered at 105 houses, inhabited exclusively by Serbs. Ottoman records mention only those inhabitants who paid taxes, so the number of Serbs who lived in the area (for example, those that served in the Ottoman army) was likely larger than was recorded.

Founding of Novi Sad

Habsburg rule was aligned with the Roman Catholic doctrine and, as it took over this area near the end of the 17th century, the government prohibited people of Orthodox faith from residing in Petrovaradin. Unable to build homes there, the Serbs of the area founded a new settlement in 1694 on the left bank of the Danube. They initially called it the 'Serb city'. Another name used for the settlement was Petrovaradinski Šanac. In 1718, the inhabitants of the village of Almaš were resettled to Petrovaradinski Šanac, where they founded Almaški Kraj ('the Almaš quarter').

According to 1720 data, the population of Ratzen Stadt was composed of 112 Serbian, 14 German, and 5 Hungarian houses. The settlement officially gained the present names Novi Sad and Újvidék (Neoplanta in Latin) in 1748 when it became a 'free royal city', in German language it was called Neusatz.

The edict that made Novi Sad a 'free royal city' was proclaimed on 1 February 1748. The edict reads:

In the 18th century, the Habsburg monarchy recruited Germans from the southern principalities of the Holy Roman Empire to relocate to the Danube valley. They wanted both to increase the population and to redevelop the river valley for agriculture, which had declined markedly under the Ottomans. To encourage such settlement, the government ensured that the German communities could practice their religion (mostly Catholicism) and use their original German dialect.

Habsburg monarchy

For much of the 18th and 19th centuries, Novi Sad remained the largest city inhabited by Serbs. The reformer of the Serbian language, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, wrote in 1817 that Novi Sad was the 'largest Serb municipality in the world'. It was a cultural and political centre for Serbs (see also Serbian Revival), who did not have their own national state at the time. Due to its cultural and political influence, the city became known as the 'Serbian Athens' (Srpska Atina in Serbian). According to 1843 data, Novi Sad had 17,332 inhabitants, of whom 9,675 were Orthodox Christians, 5,724 Catholics, 1,032 Protestants, 727 Jews, and 30 adherents of the Armenian church. The largest ethnic group in the city were Serbs, and the second largest were Germans.

During the Revolution of 1848–49, Novi Sad was part of Serbian Vojvodina, a Serbian autonomous region within the Austrian Empire. In 1849, the Hungarian garrison, located at the Petrovaradin Fortress, bombarded and devastated the city, which lost much of its population. According to the 1850 census, there were only 7,182 citizens left in the city, compared to 17,332 in 1843. Marija Trandafil and her husband paid for some of the rebuilding including two churches. Between 1849 and 1860, Novi Sad was part of a separate Austrian crownland known as the Voivodeship of Serbia and Banat of Temeschwar. After the abolishment of this province, the city was included into the Batsch-Bodrog County. The post office was opened in 1853.

Following the compromise of 1867, Novi Sad was located within the Kingdom of Hungary, the Transleithania, which comprised half of the new Austro-Hungarian Empire. During this time, the Magyarization policy of the Hungarian government drastically altered the demographic structure of the city as the formerly predominantly Serbian population became one with a more mixed character. In 1880, 41.2% of the city's inhabitants used the Serbian language most frequently and 25.9% employed Hungarian. In the following decades, the percentage of Serbian-speakers decreased, while the number of Hungarian-speakers increased. According to the 1910 census, the city had 33,590 residents, of whom 13,343 (39.72%) spoke Hungarian, 11,594 (34.52%) Serbian, 5,918 (17.62%) German and 1,453 (4.33%) Slovak. It is not certain whether Hungarians or Serbs were the larger ethnic group in the city in 1910, since the various ethnic groups (Bunjevci, Romani, Jews, other South Slavic people, etc.) were classified in census results only according to the language they spoke.

Similar demographic changes can be seen in the religious structure: in 1870, the population of Novi Sad included 8,134 Orthodox Christians, 6,684 Catholics, 1,725 Calvinists, 1,343 Lutherans, and others. In 1910, the population included 13,383 Roman Catholics and 11,553 Orthodox Christians, while 3,089 declared themselves as Lutheran, 2,751 as Calvinist, and 2,326 as Jewish.

Serbia and Yugoslavia

On 25 November 1918, the Assembly of Serbs, Bunjevci and other Slavs of Vojvodina in Novi Sad proclaimed the union of the region of Vojvodina with the Kingdom of Serbia. From 1 December 1918, Novi Sad was part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes; and in 1929, it became the capital of the Danube Banovina, a province of the newly named Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In 1921, the population of Novi Sad numbered 39,122 inhabitants, 16,293 of whom spoke the Serbian language, 12,991 Hungarian, 6,373 German, 1,117 Slovak, etc.

In 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded and partitioned by the Axis powers, and its northern parts, including Novi Sad, were annexed by Hungary. During World War II, about 5,000 citizens were murdered and many others were resettled. During the three days of the Novi Sad raid (21–23 January 1942) alone, Hungarian police killed 1,246 citizens, among them more than 800 Jews, and threw their corpses into the icy waters of the Danube.

The total death toll of the raid was around 2,500. Citizens of all nationalities—Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks, and others—fought together against the Axis authorities.^[4] In 1975 the whole city was awarded the title People's Hero of Yugoslavia.

The Yugoslav Partisans of Syrmia and Bačka entered the city on 23 October 1944. During the military administration of Banat, Bačka and Baranja (17 October 1944 – 27 January 1945), the Partisans killed tens of thousands, mostly Serbs, Germans, and Hungarians, who were perceived as opponents to the new regime.

Novi Sad became part of the new Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Since 1945, Novi Sad has been the capital of Vojvodina, a province of the Republic of Serbia. The city went through rapid industrialization and its population more than doubled in the period between World War II and the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

After 1992, Novi Sad became a part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Devastated by NATO bombardment during the Kosovo War of 1999, Novi Sad was left without any of its three Danube bridges (Žeželj Bridge, Varadin Bridge and Liberty Bridge), communications, water, and electricity. Residential areas were cluster-bombed several times while the oil refinery was bombarded daily, causing severe pollution and widespread ecological damage. In 2003, FR Yugoslavia was transformed into the state union of Serbia and Montenegro. These two states separated in June 2006 (following the May 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum), leaving Novi Sad part of the Republic of Serbia.

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