Story
The story of Petrovaradin Fortress
They call it the Gibraltar of the Danube, and people have lived on this rock for a very long time: archaeologists found a Paleolithic settlement on the upper fortress dating from 19,000 to 15,000 BC, and ramparts from around 3000 BC. The Romans built a fort here on their Danube frontier, and in the Middle Ages Cistercian monks from France raised a fortified monastery.
The Ottomans took it in 1526 and held it until the Austrians captured it in 1687. The Austrians then built the bastion fortress you see, laying the cornerstone of its southern part on 18 October 1692. On 5 August 1716 Prince Eugene of Savoy defeated the Ottoman army of Grand Vizier Damat Ali Pasha here, a victory that ended the Ottoman threat to Central Europe. Beneath your feet run more than 16 kilometres of preserved underground corridors.
Look up at the clock tower: its hands are reversed, the small one showing minutes and the big one hours, so that fishermen on the Danube could read the time from far away.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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