History

Since its foundation, Novi Sad had been peopled since the pre-history. The pre-historical remnants at Bistrica have been witnessing thereabout, and today it has been a commercial centre on the Danube. But the development of the town had begun in XVII century. At that time the town had become the main asylum to Serbian refugees coming fro Srem and Backa having been occupied by Turks. They were soldiers, but also the artisan and merchants attracted by the commercial development of the town. The Habsburgs had constructed the fortress of Petrovaradin to strengthen this key position on the Danube. This security and the economic needs had in XVIII century attracted the Hungarians and the Germans from Schwab to settle in the suburbs of the town.

In 1748 the riches acquired by the wheat business and by the transport of minerals had allowed to buy the status of the free town. The Austro-Hungarian emperor had granted it to a town being merely a burgh of the name of Neusatz – Novi Sad in German.

But the town had in modern times suffered some historical accidents having left cicatrices behind them. During the 1848 Revolution Serbs and Hungarians from the town had inclined to the revolutionary ideas. The repression had been bloody. The Austrians had been cannon bombing on June 11th 1848 and a part of the town had been destroyed. That was the reason why some parts of the town have been from the second half of the XIX century when the reconstruction had been enterprised by the bourgeois families. This has been at the same time a period of intensive cultural development to Serbs. There are here great writers and philosophers. For the protection from Turks democratic parties had been founded. Novi Sad and Vojvodina accepted the Yugoslav monarchy, but the II World War had put the town under the direct German administration having thus cut it off the collaborator Serbia. An important period of the war had taken place in the planes of Srem over a few kilometres when Tito had caused a massacre of many a thousand adolescents armed in the name of the Communist Party while the Red Army had been advancing and had liberated Belgrade.
Novi Sad became in 1946 the capital of the autonomous province of Vojvodina. The town had known a new development thanks to the chemical and the metallurgic industry and has been continuing to be the agricultural lungs of Serbia.

When the Yugoslav wars began 1991 Novi Sad had been a prosperous town where many nationalities had been living together. This coexistence had not been weakened in spite of the events. The embargo to Yugoslavia ordered by UN 1992 had interrupted all traffic on the Danube and no foreign ship passed Novi Sad till 1998. Then the 1999 NATO bombings had been destroying when the municipal had opposed Milosevic, 12 factories, 4 bridges and many tens dead. Since the fall of the communist regime in October 2000 and the traffic renewal the economics had been recovering, although in a slower rhythm than before.