History
Farmers of the Neolithic, a Roman villa, a medieval Hungarian abbey turned fortress, a Serbian monastery with a copying workshop, partisan resistance and a village rebuilt after the war. A great deal of history has passed through one small valley.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| about 7,000 years ago | Neolithic farmers settle at Gradina, in what is now Novi Rakovac. |
| 3rd–4th century AD | A late Roman villa with underfloor heating (hypocaust) stands on the same spot. |
| 12th century | A Benedictine abbey, known in Hungarian charters as Dombó, builds a three-aisled Romanesque basilica about 32 m long, with a carved marble chancel screen. The exact date of construction is debated. |
| 1237 | The abbot of Dombó (“Abbas de Dombo”) appears in a written charter for the first time. |
| 1416 | Abbot George of Dombó is captured by Ottoman raiders. |
| 1467–1473 | The abbey is turned into a fortress with walls, gates and a moat. |
| 1526 | During the Ottoman campaign that ended at Mohács, the fortress of Dombó falls. |
| late 15th century | According to legend, Raka, chamberlain of Despot Jovan Branković, founds Rakovac Monastery. |
| 1545–1546 | Rakovac Monastery appears in Ottoman tax registers, its first reliable record. |
| 1700–1714 | The monastery’s scriptorium copies Dušan’s Code (1700) and completes the Rakovac Srbljak (1714). |
| 1735–1771 | Baroque rebuilding: bell tower (1735), iconostasis (1763), refectory paintings (1768), residential wings (1771). |
| 1930s | Stone quarrying at Beli Majdan comes to an end. |
| 1941–1945 | Srem is occupied. Quarry workers and villagers join the partisans. In 1943 the monastery is looted and blown up and the old village burned. |
| after 1945 | The old village is not rebuilt. Novi Rakovac grows further down the valley, and the old part becomes Stari Rakovac. |
| 1990 | The monastery is declared a Monument of Culture of Exceptional Importance. Its church is restored during the 1990s. |
| 2022 | The census counts 2,137 residents. |
How sure are we?
Every statement on these pages comes from a published source, listed in the project’s fact log. Where historians disagree, for example on the date of the Dombó basilica or on when the fortress was finally destroyed, we say so on the page rather than choosing one answer.Archaeological site · protected cultural property
Seven thousand years in one place: a Neolithic village, a Roman villa, a medieval Benedictine abbey that became a fortress, and today an excavation site on the edge of Rakovac.
From a legend of 1498 to today
A hunter’s vow, a scriptorium that copied Serbia’s medieval law code, a baroque golden age, destruction in 1943 and a slow rebirth.
1941–1945
Quarry workers who swore the partisan oath, raids on the quarry’s dynamite store, the great offensive of August 1942, and a village burned in 1943.
Spomen-obeležje Kamenolom
The memorial near the monastery where villagers and quarry workers took the partisan oath in 1941, with the names of the fallen and of the civilian victims.
Spomenik Stručica
Three curved concrete pillars in Novi Rakovac for three partisan leaders killed here in August 1942.
The village today
Why the village has an old and a new part, and how it grew from 582 people in 1948 to more than 2,000 today.
Maps · 18th–20th century
Rakovac on historical maps: the detailed Austro-Hungarian special map of 1915 and a general map from about 1910, with more maps from archives and private collections to come.
Photos from family albums
Rakovac in photos from every decade, shared by the people of the village and its friends: sorted by year, with the photographer and the person who sent each picture.
Rakovac
