Slavonski Brod

Today, the administrative center of Slavonski Brod County is home to more than a third of the county's population and the center of the region's cultural and economic life. The road the city had to travel before it reached its present status was long and often infested with attacks by invading armies.The first written records of a settlement in the Slavonski Brod area were records of Roman Marsonia - inhabited by retired Roman legionaries - which disappeared after the fall of the Roman Empire. Another settlement began to emerge in the fog of the Dark Ages. Legend has it that Slavonski Brod was founded at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries by prominent members of the Berislavić noble family. Apart from being their residence, it also served as a defensive wall against the Ottomans, who ruled large parts of neighboring Bosnia from 1463. After returning from an unsuccessful march on Vienna in 1536, the Ottomans plundered Croatian lands and conquered the province of Slavonia, including Slavonski Brod. During the sixteenth century, Slavonski Brod became an Ottoman military and trading base. However, the city has not preserved any features of these medieval and early modern settlements.Today’s form, spirit, and mentality of the city began to emerge in the early eighteenth century, when it became part of the central European empire in the Habsburg Monarchy.The urban form and the central European spirit were best imprinted in the memory of the Slavonski Brod fortress and the Franciscan monastery.

№193 in Cities of Croatia