The caption is in English and credits a named draughtsman, with a cross-reference to a page of text, so this is a wood engraving cut for an illustrated weekly and the fortress was news to a British readership. Letterpress from the other side of the sheet shows faintly through the sky. An engraver's signature is cut into the water at the lower corner but cannot be read. On the river are a long roofed passenger boat and several lateen-rigged Danube barges, and the barrack range runs unbroken along the crest of the bluff.
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. Today the fortress houses the City Museum of Novi Sad and hosts the EXIT festival each summer.
On the card
THE TOWN AND FORTRESS OF PETERWARDEIN, ON THE DANUBE. FROM A DRAWING BY S. READ. SEE PAGE
- Date
- 1860
- Coordinates
- 45.25250, 19.86250
- Source
- Public online source
- Licence
- Public domain (historical photograph)
- Size
- 2000 × 1434 px
Open on the full map ›