 Historical |
 Today |
A BRIEF HISTORY OF OSIJEK
Amblem of Osijek
|
Historical |
Today |
The oldest, prehistoric, settlement in the Osijek area came into being on the banks of the Drava river, on what is today hardly noticeable eminence that stretches east to west in the northern part of Retfala. At the end of the 1st century BC, the Romans conquered the whole of Pannonia, and on the slightly higher right bank of the Drava built a camp named Mursa, in what is today the Lower Town (from the Customs House In the west to Trg bana Josipa Jelačića in the east, from Frankopanska Street in the south to the Drava in the north).
Atilla’s Huns destroyed Mursa in 441. To the west of the ruins, on a raised terrace and a little hill close to the banks, a Slavic settlement was established in the 7th century. The Slavic and Early Croatian settlers called their town Osijek, the name containing, according to some interpretations, the concept of something that is odsječen, or cut off.
Later, medieval Osijek was built on the general area of today’s Fort. In historical sources, Osijek is first mentioned in a document of the Croatian-Hungarian king Emerik, in 1196, in Hungarian, as Ezek. At that time Osijek was a Drava port and market town. Knowing well the importance of the town in terms of communications and strategy, the Ottoman Turks captured it in 1526, and governed Osijek for 161 years.
The Austrian authorities, planning the construction of a military fortress, in 1692 shifted the one-time Turkish town to about 1,500 metres of the town wall. Thus a new settlement was founded, called the Upper Town. In summer or early autumn 1698, east of the fortress, they started on the foundation of the Lower Town. The Upper Town and the Fort constituted a united administrative until 1702, when the town obtained a separate municipal administration. The Lower Town was a separate municipality.
Modelling it on Dutch lowland forts, the Austrian rulers built the Fort according to plan between 1712 and 1722, when it was on the whole completed, although minor building works did go on until the 1760s. All the walls of the Turkish fort were incorporated into the new walls. In 1792, mainly German colonisers from Bačka and Banat came to settle in the south of the city area, creating a New Town quarter known as Novi Grad, or New Town.
The favourable geographical position of the town, plus trade and crafts, were to give 18th century Osijek its principal character. Economic development came with an increase in the population and the development of education, culture, sport and health care. The city was unified in 1786; this led to the even stronger development of the town, which was proclaimed a free and royal city in 1809.
In the wave of construction during the 19th and early 20th centuries many buildings were put up and indeed whole streets that changed its overall appearance. In this period, after Zagreb, Osijek became the industrially most developed city in Croatia. In the post-war period after 1945 a great deal changed the whole of the political, economic, administrative, cultural and social landscape.
After the Homeland War and the proclamation of the independent and sovereign Republic of Croatia, Osijek started out on a new kind of political, social and cultural life. Osijek is entering the 21st century with its roads and bridges directed towards the Adriatic Sea on the one hand and the Danube valley on the other.
