Ram Castle: An Ottoman Fortress and Historical Site in Serbia

Visitor Information

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Official Website: www.ramskatvrdjava.rs

Country: Serbia

Civilization: Ottoman, Roman

Site type: Military

Remains: Fort

History

Ram Castle stands in the village of Ram, in the municipality of Ram, Serbia; it was constructed by the Ottoman Empire.

The site was occupied long before the Ottomans arrived. Archaeological evidence shows Celtic settlement and a Roman funerary monument erected during the reign of Emperor Trajan (98–117 CE). The Roman phase included cavalry detachments and a complex used for religious observance or navigation, and a tower within the complex was dedicated to Jupiter by a member of Legio VII Claudia, a Roman legion.

Medieval records first mention the place in 1128 AD amid clashes between Byzantine and Hungarian forces. Centuries later, after the Ottomans seized nearby strongpoints, Sultan Bayezid II commissioned a new artillery fort here in 1483, built soon after the capture of Kulič Fortress. The fortress served to guard the empire’s northern border and to control traffic on the Danube.

The stronghold’s role shifted as Ottoman frontiers moved. After the empire advanced north of the river in 1521 and following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the site declined in military importance and increasingly functioned as a river trade post. A roadside inn with twenty-four rooms, a caravanserai (a lodging for traveling merchants), was established beside the fort and became the seed of the modern village known as Ram; that inn survives today as part of a Serbian Orthodox Church complex built in 1839.

Conflict returned in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The fortress suffered partial destruction during Koča’s frontier rebellion in 1788, and insurgent Serbian forces captured it in 1806 during the First Serbian Uprising. Ottoman garrisons finally evacuated the position in the middle of the 19th century. In the modern era the site has been the subject of archaeological work beginning in 1980 and conducted intensively from 2015 to 2018, and it has undergone conservation and rebuilding efforts in the 2010s.

Remains

The castle occupies a steep rock platform on the Danube’s right bank and follows an irregular five-sided plan roughly 35 by 25 metres in size. Built mainly of crushed stone set with a fine limestone mortar, the structure incorporates brickwork in vaults and arches and retains an original grill-like wooden framework as part of its build. The position overlooks a broad river bend near the mouths of the Karaš and Nera rivers, underlining the site’s riverine role.

Five towers rise at varying heights on four usable levels, three placed along the eastern rampart and two on the western side, while the principal entrance is through the southwestern keep, called the donžon (the main fortified tower). Four corner towers together with the entrance tower form the defensive circuit. Walls measure between about two and just over three metres in thickness, and the earthen ramparts vary in breadth and elevation. A wide dry moat surrounds the main enclosure and two additional outer ramparts stand beyond it; a bridge once linked the southeastern tower to these outer works.

Artillery fittings remain prominent. The towers and ramparts contain thirty-six cannon embrasures — openings for guns — a number that implies a sizeable artillery detachment would have been required to service the guns. Protective parapets with battlements are visible, and access routes to upper floors were deliberately limited by tower portals or external staircases to slow any attacker seeking to reach the higher levels.

Within the castle, the footprint of a mosque occupies a central position, reflecting the Ottoman garrison’s religious needs. Upper floors preserve masonry hearths complete with chimneys, which point to domestic or administrative activity, and excavators recorded a purpose-built privy associated with the commander’s quarter. Below the towers a paved terrace leads to stone steps descending to the riverbank and to an old ferry landing.

Earlier monuments survive under Ottoman layers. A Roman mausoleum, about thirteen metres across with walls three metres thick, stands incorporated into the fortification and was preserved because the later builders enclosed it within their masonry. Excavations uncovered military and daily-life objects spanning centuries, including seventeenth-century firearms, glass incendiary devices, tools, ceramic vessels, Chinese porcelain, stone cannonballs repurposed as scale weights, and a measuring ruler some seventy-six centimetres long; these finds document both martial activity and wider connections.

The overall state of the fort is reported as good. One tower on the southeastern side, known as Tower II, had been nearly destroyed but was partially rebuilt during recent conservation work using materials and methods chosen to match the original. Local shale was quarried for repair stone, bespoke bricks were made to replace lost units, and the original mortar composition was replicated; restorers avoided modern cement, synthetic additives, and iron reinforcements to preserve historical building practice. Nearby the caravanserai that once served travelers, a twenty-four-room inn, was adapted over time and survives as part of the nineteenth-century Serbian Orthodox church complex.