A Nest atop Stara Planina
Proud as they may be of their city’s long and eventful history, the residents of Knjaževac nevertheless are practical people, focused on modern issues and interests.
By Jovo Simišić
Photo by Courtesy of Tourist Organisation of Knjaževac
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Since antiquity, various tribes settled in the area surrounding Knjaževac, formerly Gurgusovac, of the Timok Region. On the eve of the new era, this region came under Roman rule. Traces from that period (3 A.D.) are to be found in the form of remnants of the villages Timacum Maisus (Great Timok) and Timacum Minus (Little Timok). First reliable mention of the Slav Timok tribe and their chief Born was in 818 A.D. The Turks ruled the Timok Region from 1396 to 1833, when the Serbs resumed rule of this area. Not long after the Turks’ departure, in 1858, Gurgusovac became Knjaževac, in honor of Knjaz (Prince) Miloš Obrenović. The year 1886, when it was officially proclaimed a town, marked the beginning of a period of growth and prosperity for this city.
Knjaževac reached the peak of its economic and social progress in the second half of the 20th century, with the construction, in 1960, of a number of industrial plants, such as the clothing factory "Branka Dinić", the "Leda" shoe factory, the tractor and machine industry "IMT", the Timok furniture factory "Tina", and the wine cellar, which later grew into PPK "Džervin". This period, during which Knjaževac flourished, was replaced by years of crisis. The industry deteriorated until recent years, when the city turned toward agriculture and its newly-discovered business activity – tourism.
The possibilities for tourism are many. Firstly, there is Stara Planina, whose peaks ranging between 1100 and 1900 meters a.s.l. are covered in snow for the greater part of the year. Serbia’s highest peak, Midžor, tops this mountain at 2169m a.s.l. Tourism has been a growing industry branch here for the past thirty years. In 1982, a detailed development plan was made for Stara Planina, the largest part of whose territory spreads over Knjaževac Municipality, which prompted the construction, five years ago, of the first five skiing tracks. The tracks were preceded by the building of a Mountaineering Chalet, accommodating 80 beds and a two-star hotel with 60 beds.
A luxury four star hotel and spa, "Stara Planina", has recently been constructed on Jabučko ravnište, standing at 1350m a.s.l. The hotel offers 380 beds in 146 accommodation units with double-bed rooms, apartments, and luxury suites. The guests also have at their disposal three conference halls, a restaurant, pizzeria, bar, children’s playroom, skating rink, a wellness and spa center with an indoor pool, a hairdresser’s salon, ATM, exchange office, shop, designer clothes shop, perfume shop, pharmacy, and underground garage with 147 parking spaces. At the same time, Serbia’s first and only ski gondola was constructed, connecting the Stara Planina Hotel with the Konjarnik ski track. The gondola’s maximum capacity is 2400 skiers per hour in 40 cabins, and the four-seat ski lift also carries 2400 skiers an hour. From the very beginning the Stara Planina ski center was equipped with artificial snow facilities covering over 4km of the total of 13km of ski track and preventing any shortage of snow that could threaten the stay of winter sport lovers. In addition to the regulation of Jabučko Ramište, plans for the future include the construction of other accommodation facilities at three more locations on Stara Planina. The first is Konjarnik, with existing development plans and utilities infrastructure: water and energy supply and sewage system. Standing at the foot of the four-seat ski lift, the accommodation in Konjarnik will provide over three hundred beds. The other two sites for similar facilities are Golema Reka and Kozarnica, where villages and skiing infrastructure will be built.
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In Knjaževac Municipality, in the village of Rgošte, there is a thermal spring with an Olympic pool, made more than 20 years ago. Development and constructions plans are ready for the future village and tourist center to be constructed here. The area around the pool, covering 5 hectares, will be the site of a hotel with eighty beds, an indoor pool, a mini aqua park for children and relaxation facilities for adults.
One of the focal points for the people of the Knjaževac Municipality is the intense development of rural tourism for which this area is particularly well suited. There is a growing interest among the village population for this form of activity and several households have begun taking in guests with excellent results, prompting other to follow their example. An additional stimulus to these plans came in the form of a new hotel on Stara Planina and not less in the growing interest in Serbia and abroad for this part of our country.
Saša Prokopović, the proprietor of Ethnic Village Srna, standing at the foot of Stara Planina, in Inova on the Trgoviški Timok river, is building a hotel with a restaurant and accompanying facilities which include a swimming pool. The home of Brane Veljković, in the village of Gradište, has a yard with a fish pond with trout and a small hydroelectric plant with a dam. Another newcomer in the tourist trade is Radivoje Bogdanović who, in the past two years, has opened the doors of his farm in Kalna to tourists, offering accommodation in the form of three double rooms and a six-bed apartment.
Those who choose to stay in one of the villages on the slopes of Stara Planina, Crni Vrh, Balta, Berilovac will have the opportu nity of enjoying long walks or hiking tours through unspoiled nature, pick medicinal herbs and enjoy the local culinary specialty belmuž, cheese, freshly baked bread and other traditional dishes of the national cuisine. Not to be forgotten is the fact that this is a winegrowing area and that Knjaževac stands proud on Serbia’s wine map with two exceptional wine cellars, the "Jović" winery and the "Isakov" wine cellar.
A visit to Knjaževac must include the Homeland Museum whose several buildings and locations exhibit this region’s cultural heritage. The Sibinović House in the center of the city has a regular exhibition of items from prehistoric times to the middle of the 20th century. Particularly interesting is the rich and varied exhibition of ethnic objects such as the double-knit socks, accompanied by a unique collection of drawn and written documents made by the teachers Vidosav and Svetozar Popović, the prior owners of the greater part of this collection. Double-knit socks are characteristic because of the double yarn, often in different colors, used for knitting. The Town Museum also stands in the center of the city. Both the buildings housing the two museums are cultural monuments and excellent examples of urban architecture from the close of the 19th and start of the 20th century.
The archeological-ethnic park in Ravna and the locality Timacum Minus are 8km distant from Knjaževac, on the road to Zaječar. Timacum Minus, built in 1 A.D., is the oldest military fortification in Serbia and was used by Roman soldiers engaged on guarding the roads. Those roads led from present-day Niš to the imperial palace in Felix Romuliana, present-day Gamzigrad near Zaječar. The archeological-ethnic park near Timacum Minus was opened in 1985 in the yard of the former village school, which in turn was built in 1906 and is also a cultural monument. The lapidarium in the park has a very large and valuable collection of tombstones and sacrificial altars found within the fortification. Many of the sacrificial altars still have engravings indicating who they were dedicated to. One of them was dedicated to the god Mars, another to the goddess Diana, both pointing to the prior existence of temples of these deities. The upper part of the tombstones holds, just like today’s tombstones, engravings of men’s and women’s faces, sometimes of entire families. The central part is reserved for the epitaph, while the lower part is often embellished by a relief in the form of a vine, proof of this region’s long winegrowing tradition.
The area surrounding Knjaževac also harbors unexpected "jewels" of cultural heritage, such as the prehistoric drawing, a unique example of primitive cave art, in the cave near the village of Gabrovnica on Stara Planina. Needless to say, there are also examples of medieval art in the Church of Our Lady in Donja Kamenica.
