Požarevac

Požarevac (Serbian Cyrillic: Пожаревац) is a city in eastern Serbia. It is located between three rivers: Danube, Great Morava and Mlava. It is the administrative centre of the Braničevo District of Serbia. In 2011, the city had a population of 44,183 and its municipal area 75,334.

Name

In Serbian, the city is known as Požarevac (Пожаревац), in Romanian as Pojarevaţ, in Turkish as Pasarofça, in German as Passarowitz, and in Hungarian as Pozsarevác.

The name means "fire-town" in Serbian (Here "fire" is in the sense of a disaster).

History

Ancient times

In ancient times, the area was inhabited by Thracians, Dacians, and Celts. There was a city at this locality known as Margus in Latin after the Roman conquest in the first century BC.

In 435, the city of Margus, under the Eastern Roman Empire, was the site of a treaty between the Byzantine Empire and the Hun leaders Attila and Bleda.

One pretext for the Hun invasion of the Eastern Roman Empire in 442 was that the Bishop of Margus had crossed the Danube to ransack and desecrate the royal Hun graves on the north bank of the Danube. When the Romans discussed handing over the Bishop, he slipped away and betrayed the city to the Huns, who then sacked the city and went on to invade as far as the gates of Constantinople itself.