Serbia’s Hidden Habsburg Legacy

Like a fading yet elegant countess, Sombor dresses the part. Its residents, who carry a deep urban pride in pedigree derived from a long and illustrious history, lovingly care for its baroque and modern facades.

Text by Alexander Billinis
Photo by Milan Melka

Tucked away in Serbia’s extreme northwest, some thirty kilometers from Hungary and Croatia, lies this tranquil, hidden gem of a city. I use the term "city" literally, as any Somborac (a Sombor resident), will tell you, Sombor’s status as a city dates from the charter received from the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa in 1741. For most of the time since, this city has served as the economic, administrative and cultural hub of a much wider area.

Sombor is one of those cities where you fi nd a built-in cosmopolitan atmosphere, in spite of its diminutive size (about 50,000 inhabitants) due to its diverse population and history. Serbian and Hungarian are spoken everywhere on the streets, and all public notices must be in both languages.

This is, after all, Vojvodina, where over twenty nationalities live, and at least five different languages enjoy official status. For over 200 years Sombor was a key provincial center in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and in its elegant public and residential structures, one can trace the empire’s architectural history.

A Sombor pediatrician, an elegant elderly Hungarian gentleman, put it beautifully, "a true Somborac is someone who, when hearing a church bell, will tell you from which church the bell tolls, and why it is tolling." Here, the Orthodox and Catholics rub shoulders on every street, and marriage across ethnic and religious lines is so common as to be unnoticed. Beyond one’s ethnic or religious identity, here in Sombor one senses a deep civic identity and attachment to the city by all of its nationalities, and a real sense of belonging in a diverse yet unified community.

Sombor today has the romance, the nostalgia, and a hint of the sorrow that often comes with a loss of economic or administrative prestige. The small city claims a disproportionate number of artists, a true artists’ colony in waiting. It is a good place to write a book, to fall in love, or to paint, and all are done here in a background of fading architectural magnificence enjoyed with the intimacy that comes from life in the slow lane.

Fortunately, Sombor is only a few hours away from Belgrade or Novi Sad, and a mere hour from Subotica. Buses regularly make the trip, but to take in the city fully and at a leisurely pace, hiring a car or taking city tour is the best way to go. The total distance from Belgrade is 180 km and 100 km from Novi Sad.

An overnight stay is ideal to do the city and its environs justice. Sombor has no big hotels, just smaller, more intimate pensions, which in all honesty are more becoming for the city’s diminutive and personable character.

The Kralja Petra (King Peter) Street is the city’s heart, a long pedestrian zone, bordered to the south by the City Municipality Building, a stately structure from the late Austro-Hungarian period, when Sombor was an important administrative center in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Worth seeing is the splendid yet fading elegance of this structure, its beautiful gate, where cobblestones give way to wooden blocks (to muffle the sound of horseshoes, back in the day). Flanking the municipality building are manicured parks, together with a magnificent, twin-spired Catholic Church, Sombor’s tallest building and most visible monument when approaching the city.

The Kralja Petra Street gives way to Saint George’s Square, the site of the city’s Orthodox Cathedral, one of the finest examples of baroque Orthodox architecture anywhere, and a reminder in edifice that the Sombor Serbs, while remaining true to their faith, readily absorbed much of the culture and architecture of the Hapsburg realm.

Sombor’s Serbs gave back much to their nation. The first teachers’ school for the Serbian language began here. The Serbian Reading Room, established here in 1845, further fostered the expansion of the evolving Serbian literature. Two Serbian Patriarchs were of Sombor birth, and several of the nation’s finest writers and painters also called Sombor home. Two key galleries, Milan Konjović gallery and Laza Kostić gallery, honor these local artists and are a must see.

The Fijaker (Carriage) is a symbol of Sombor, and near the City Museum several horse drawn carriages are available for hire to tour the city’s ring road, a diminutive copy of Vienna’s Ringstrasse. The driver will likely point other sites of interest along the slow ride around the city center. One item of interest are Sombor’s trees, many of which were imported from the Mississippi Valley in the United States in order to protect the town from the dust of the surrounding agricultural areas. They now stand as proud sentinels along major thoroughfares.

Finally, if there is an evening theater event, a visit to Sombor’s National Theater is another experience not to be missed on; its elegant, late Hapsburg interior may distract one from the performance with its lovely gabled workmanship.

In Sombor, the coffeehouse culture is a delightful combination of Balkan and Austrian, and coffeehouses flank Kralja Petra Street, as well as side streets and intimate courtyards. Several deserve a visit, including Stari Fijaker, set in the gardens next to the municipality building, and Café des Artes, a bohemian coffeehouse set in a cozy courtyard right off Kralja Petra Street, and next to the Tourist Information Office.

While the city is a delightful place to spend a day or two, it would be a mistake not to visit the countryside, particularly a restored Sombor salaš. A Hungarian term for farmhouse, a salaš helped to farm and to process the area’s bounty of nature, and many have been restored by enthusiasts and local entrepreneurs to their rustic state, complete with old farm implements, interiors, and utensils.

Sombor’s preserved elegance and slower, more intimate pace of life allows the visitor to experience its bounty of nature and architecture in a close, unhurried manner. While close in terms of distance, it is nonetheless far away in terms of feel and culture. No one who visits fails to be moved, and once one comes, one just might stay on.