Vojvodina is the autonomous province of Serbia, located north of Belgrade, the country's capital, in the farming region called the Pannonian plain. Its western and southern borders are marked by great rivers, the Danube and the Sava, whose banks are often dotted with weekend cottages, and with forests and marshlands, some of which have been turned into wildlife sanctuaries and good hunting grounds. The third river, the Tisa, flows southward from Hungary and cuts Vojvodina approximately in half. These three rivers mark Vojvodina’s three historic regions: Bačka, the region which is shared with Hungary, in the North West; Banat, shared with Romania, in the East; and Srem, in the South-West, shared with both Croatia and Central Serbia, as part of Srem has been included in the Belgrade metropolitan region.
The locals here often take pride in their cities and villages having a more European look than those just south of the rivers. This is because Vojvodina entered the first Yugoslavia (after WW I) as an affluent region of the Habsburg Empire, while the rest of Serbia had long been dominated by the Ottoman Turks. Along with the German, Hungarian, and Jewish cultures which thrived in this ethnically diverse region, Vojvodina was the place of the Serb cultural revival at that time. It largely inspired the other Serbs to fight against the Ottoman rule – and achieve their own independence in the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries. And even when what is now Central Serbia proclaimed independence from the Turks in 1875, the cities with most ethnic Serbs were still in the Habsbug Monarchy, except for Belgrade. This included those in the region which is now Vojvodina: Novi Sad, Sombor, Bečkerek (now Zrenjanin), and Pančevo.
Novi Sad is currently the capital and largest city in the province with over 300,000 residents. It was the largest Serbian city, along with Sombor between the 17th and 19th centuries. Novi Sad was also called the Serbian Athens, as the cultural center of the Austrian Serbs. Subotica was a city of over 100,000 people at the beginning of the 20th century. In contrast to Novi Sad, the Serbs there constituted only a small minority at that time, the rest being the Hungarians, Bunjevci, Germans, etc. When Yugoslavia was formed after WW I, Subotica was the second largest city in the new country, after Zagreb, now the capital of Croatia. Unfortunately, Subotica stagnated throughout the 20th century, and now it is only the second largest city in Vojvodina. It boasts a good old town atmosphere and many Art Nouveau landmarks, and a popular resort by Lake Palić. Bečkerek was renamed Zrenjanin after WWII, after a local war hero, and is now Vojvodina's third largest city. Sombor, another old town close to the Hungarian border, with a lot of greenery and bicycles, has a remarkable theater and the oldest Serbian teacher's college. Like Subotica, it stagnated populationwise in the twentieth century and currently has about 50,000 people. Pančevo (currently 135,000) was, with Zemun, the southernmost Austro-Hungarian outpost bordering first Turkey and later Serbia, lying on the Danube river and very close to Belgrade. After Yugoslavia was created, the Belgrade metropolitan region tried to merge the three cities into one. Zemun merged with Belgrade, and is now part of Central Serbia, while Pančevo remains a separate city. However, the commuter train line connecting Belgrade and Pančevo brings these two cities much closer together.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Vojvodina
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Vojvodina - updated May 2024
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Vojvodina Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
