An engraved siege plan showing the Danube braided into several channels around wooded islands, with the fortress on its right-bank promontory keyed A and the Serb town below it keyed B. Two pontoon bridges are keyed across the river, and an Ottoman camp is drawn on the hills at the right with siege approaches worked toward the walls. The settlement keyed as the Raitzen Stadt is the community on the Backa bank that became Novi Sad.
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
Die Vestung Peterwardein mit dabeystehender Christlicher Armee und darauff gefuhrten attaquen des Erbfeindes. A. Die Vestung Peterwardein. B. die Raitzen Stadt.
The fortress of Peterwardein with the Christian army encamped beside it and the attacks made upon it by the hereditary enemy. A. The fortress of Peterwardein. B. the Serb town. The library transcribes the first word as Fesstung; the plate reads Vestung.
- Date
- circa 1710
- Coordinates
- 45.25250, 19.86250
- Source
- National and University Library in Zagreb
- Credit
- National and University Library in Zagreb
- Licence
- Public domain
- Size
- 5000 × 3590 px
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