Vrdnik Tower

Vrdnička kula, the Vrdnik Tower, is the keep (donjon) of the medieval fortified town of Vrdnik, known in Hungarian and papal documents as Castrum Rednek. It stands at about 400 m on the southern slopes of Fruška Gora, above the spa village of Vrdnik and the Fruške Terme resort. From Stari Rakovac the drive over the mountain takes about 10 minutes. The tower is protected as a Cultural Monument of Great Importance.

History

• Roman times. Finds from the period of the Tetrarchy and of Emperor Probus (276–282), who governed part of the empire from Sirmium, today’s Sremska Mitrovica, suggest that the first fortification here was a Roman lookout guarding the approach to Sirmium.
• 1315. The fortress appears in written sources for the first time, as one of the estates of the Archbishop of Kalocsa. The castle standing today was built in the 14th century on the Roman remains.
• The castle. It had an elongated, semicircular plan of about 50 × 60 m, with a gate and an entrance tower on the east side and buttresses on the southern wall. Its strongest point was the horseshoe-shaped keep, 18 metres high, which is what survives today, together with parts of the walls.
• Ottoman period. After the Ottomans took Srem in 1521, the fortress was used by them for a while. According to the information board on site, the Ottoman authorities later treated it as a quarry and sold the stone from its walls. By 1702 a papal visitor described the fortress as already destroyed.
• Today. Archaeological research began in 2015. A steel staircase now takes visitors up inside the tower, and in 2013 construction began at the foot of the hill on a tourist complex, the “Vrdnička kula” ethno village.

Visiting

A short forest path leads up to the tower; along the way there are benches, a picnic table and a wooden shelter. From the hill you look down on Vrdnik and the Fruške Terme resort and far out over the plain of Srem.

Vrdnik was a coal-mining town from 1804, when brown coal was found here, until the mine closed in 1968. A steel mine headframe near the tower recalls that past.

The tower combines well with a day at the thermal pools: see Vrdnik spa and Fruške Terme.