A military topographic drawing of the Danube crossing at Petrovaradin, with Ratzen Statt, the settlement that grew into Novi Sad, on the low Bačka bank opposite. The fortified height fills the upper half of the sheet, works along its crest and a small town at its foot. A bridge of boats crosses to the Bačka side, where an earthwork guards the bridgehead and Ratzen Statt is drawn house by house beyond a belt of marsh. Published research attributes the drawing to the military topographer François Nicolas Sparr de Bensdorf, made during Prince Eugene of Savoy's campaigns, and places the original in the Vienna war archive; the reproduction published here carries no author and is dated 1698. The town appears in documents of the period as Rascianica civitas trans Danubium situata, and in Serbian as Racka Varoš.
About this place
A Habsburg star fortress on the right bank of the Danube, built between 1692 and 1780 on a site fortified since antiquity: the Romans held Cusum here, a medieval fortress followed, and Cistercian monks kept a monastery on the hill in the 13th century. Beneath its walls Prince Eugene of Savoy defeated a far larger Ottoman army on 5 August 1716. Nicknamed the Gibraltar on the Danube, the fortress conceals some 16 kilometres of underground counter-mine galleries dug in 1764-1776. On its clock tower the hands are reversed, the long hand showing the hours so that fishermen on the Danube could read the time from a distance. The fortress still stands over the river and houses the City Museum of Novi Sad.
On the card
Ratzen statt. / weg nach Futack.
- Date
- 1697–1698
- Coordinates
- 45.25250, 19.86250
- Source
- Public online source
- Licence
- Public domain
- Size
- 960 × 837 px
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