Eastern Serbia

The Danube gorge has some of the oldest settled sites in Europe. At Lepenski Vir, Mesolithic fishers settled from around 9500 BC and, in about 6300–6000 BC, built trapezoid houses and carved boulder heads with fish-like faces; the site was discovered in the 1960s and moved uphill before the Iron Gate dam flooded its original location. Rome later fortified the river as its frontier: Viminacium near Kostolac was the capital of Moesia Superior and a legionary base, Trajan cut a road into the gorge cliffs and commemorated it with a carved tablet, and his great bridge crossed the Danube near Kladovo. Galerius, born in the area, built the palace of Felix Romuliana at Gamzigrad at the turn of the 4th century.

In the Middle Ages the region became the last refuge of the Serbian state. After Kosovo, Despot Stefan Lazarević founded Manasija in the Resava valley, a fortified monastery whose copyists kept Serbian letters alive, and his successor Đurađ Branković built Smederevo as his capital from 1427. Smederevo's fall to the Ottomans in 1459 ended medieval Serbia. The Treaty of Passarowitz was signed at Požarevac in 1718, briefly handing the area to the Habsburgs.

The region joined the autonomous Serbian principality in the 19th century, and in 1883 the Timok area around Zaječar rose against the government in the Timok Rebellion. Under Yugoslavia, the copper mines of Bor and Majdanpek and the Iron Gate hydroelectric dam, built jointly with Romania and opened in 1972, turned the region into an industrial base.

Eastern Serbia is the home of Serbia's Vlach communities, who speak a Romanian dialect and are concentrated in villages around Negotin, Bor, Kladovo and Homolje. Their folk tradition, with its funeral rites, laments and long-held reputation for folk magic, has attracted ethnographers and writers, and their music of fiddle and flute is distinct from Serbian brass. The kolo dances of the region tend to be quick and intricate, and the villages hold their own church-day fairs.

Negotin is proud of Stevan Mokranjac, the composer who collected and arranged Serbian folk song and was born there; the Mokranjac music days are held in his memory. The Negotin vineyard country has its own architecture in the stone wine-cellar villages, the pivnice of Rajac and Rogljevo, where families kept cellars away from their homes.

Požarevac hosts the Ljubičevo equestrian games, and Smederevo's autumn festival celebrates the grape harvest and its white Smederevka grape. Religion is Orthodox, with the Morava monasteries of Manasija and Ravanica drawing pilgrims, while old customs tied to springs, caves and mountains such as the pyramid-shaped Rtanj survive in local belief and in its many modern legends.

Smederevo, with around 100,000 people in its wider municipality, is the region's largest town, followed by Požarevac, Jagodina, Zaječar, Paraćin, Ćuprija and Bor. The Morava valley towns are linked to Belgrade by motorway and have food processing and light industry; Smederevo's steelworks and the copper mines and smelter at Bor, both owned by Chinese companies since the late 2010s, are the region's biggest employers and a subject of debate over pollution. The Kostolac coal mines and power station near Požarevac supply electricity.

East of the Morava the land empties quickly. Villages in Homolje and the Timok valley have lost much of their population, and many Vlach families have long worked in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, building large houses at home with the money they send back.

Life in the towns follows a slow rhythm of morning coffee, markets and long lunches. Tourism along the Danube is growing, with river cruises, fishing and cycling on the EuroVelo 6 route adding guesthouses and restaurants in Golubac, Donji Milanovac and Kladovo.

The Danube shapes the menu along the river. Fish soup, riblja čorba, of carp, catfish and pike, fried or smoked fish, and fish grilled on a rack over coals are served in every riverside restaurant; the Danube's sturgeon were once famous, but dams and overfishing have made them rare. Inland, lamb and pork roasted on the spit are the festive food, and kačamak, a thick maize porridge eaten with cheese and kajmak, belongs to the hill villages.

Homolje lies in the hills south of the Danube, and there and in the Timok villages the Vlach kitchen adds its own pies, cheese breads and dishes of beans and smoked meat. Pihtije, pork in aspic, is a winter staple, and slatko, fruit preserved in thick syrup and offered with a glass of water, greets guests.

Wine is the region's pride. The Negotin area and the Timok valley have long wine traditions, with local grapes such as Tamjanika, an aromatic white, and Smederevo's Smederevka is Serbia's best-known local white variety. Plum and apricot rakija, and beer from Zaječar, complete the table.

The Danube gorge is the heart of the region. Golubac Fortress, a medieval castle of towers and walls climbing a crag, guards the upstream entrance and has been restored and opened to visitors. Downstream, Đerdap National Park protects the Iron Gates gorge, a series of narrows where the river squeezes between limestone cliffs; the Veliki Štrbac viewpoint looks over the Kazan narrows, and Trajan's Tablet is set into the cliff on the Serbian bank. Lepenski Vir, with its reconstructed houses and carved heads in a modern visitor centre, lies near Donji Milanovac, and the Roman fort of Diana and the Iron Gate I dam are near Kladovo.

Further west, Viminacium near Kostolac has excavated Roman baths, tombs and an amphitheatre, and Silver Lake near Veliko Gradište is a summer resort. Smederevo's triangular fortress, with its twenty-five towers, stands on the Danube bank.

In the south of the region, Felix Romuliana at Gamzigrad, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has the walls, towers and mosaic floors of Galerius's palace. Manasija monastery near Despotovac is enclosed by eleven towers, and the Resava cave and the Lisine waterfall lie in the hills beyond. The pyramid-shaped Rtanj mountain, the Negotin wine cellars and Ravanica monastery near Ćuprija round out the region.