Smederevo Fortress: Medieval Capital of the Serbian Despotate
Site at a Glance
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- Country
- Serbia
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Ottoman, Serbian Despotate
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Fortified Town
On this page15 sections
History
Smederevo Fortress is a medieval fortified city in Smederevo, Serbia, built in the fifteenth century as the temporary capital of the Serbian Despotate, a medieval Serbian state ruled by a despot, a high-ranking title used by Byzantine and southeastern European rulers. Despot Đurađ Branković ordered its construction after returning Belgrade to Hungary following the death of his predecessor, Stefan Lazarević, in 1426. The fortress became a political, military, and religious center on the Danube during the rivalry between the expanding Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary.
Foundation of the Serbian capital
Smederevo had no previous settlement when it was chosen for the new capital. Its position between Belgrade and Golubac kept the Serbian court close to Christian Hungary while giving the state control over Danube traffic and a position from which Hungarian movement into the Morava Valley could be obstructed. The location also met Ottoman political demands at a time when Serbia was balancing pressure from both larger powers.
Construction began in autumn 1428. Toma Kantakuzin and George Palaiologos Kantakouzenos supervised different stages, while Greek and Ragusan workers, meaning workers from Dubrovnik and the medieval Republic of Ragusa, took part in the brickwork. The inner city, including the ruler’s residence and associated buildings, was completed in 1430. The fortified suburb and its principal defenses were completed or brought to their final Serbian form by 1439. Jerina, the wife of Đurađ Branković and the sister of George Palaiologos Kantakouzenos, became closely associated with the demanding project. Long labor and heavy taxation contributed to her popular nickname, “Damned Jerina.”
The new fortress quickly became a setting for diplomacy and dynastic ceremony. On April 20, 1434, Đurađ’s daughter Katarina married Ulrich II of Celje there. On August 14, 1435, an agreement of “brotherhood and friendship” between Serbia and the Republic of Venice was signed in the audience hall. The treaty made Đurađ and his sons Venetian citizens. Ottoman pressure also shaped the ruling family’s diplomacy. In 1434, arrangements were made for Branković’s daughter Mara to marry Sultan Murad II, temporarily securing peace with the Ottoman Empire.
Sieges and the end of the Despotate
The peace ended in 1439, when Murad II besieged Smederevo with a force stated as approximately 130,000 soldiers. The fortress resisted artillery and held out for nearly three months, but hunger forced its surrender on August 18. Princes Grgur and Stefan Branković were subsequently blinded. Five years later, the Peace of Szeged restored Smederevo to the Branković family.
Around the beginning of 1449, Đurađ Branković imprisoned the Hungarian regent John Hunyadi in the fortress dungeons. Hunyadi remained there until his countrymen paid a ransom. Ottoman attacks in 1453 and 1456 were resisted. During the 1453 assault, Toma Kantakuzin defended Smederevo with approximately 6,000 men against about 20,000 Ottoman troops, while the raid carried away approximately 50,000 men, women, and children.
In March 1459, Stefan Tomašević assumed command of Smederevo. Negotiations led to the fortress’s surrender to the Ottomans on June 20, 1459. This brought the medieval Serbian state and the Serbian Despotate to an end. Smederevo then became the center of the Smederevo Sanjak, an Ottoman administrative and military district, within the Rumelia Eyalet, a larger Ottoman province, from 1459 to 1521. It retained military importance as a frontier stronghold until the establishment of the Timișoara Eyalet in 1552.
Ottoman, Habsburg, and Serbian rule
Ottoman additions continued between 1460 and 1480, and fortified trenches were added during the first half of the eighteenth century. The fortress came under temporary Habsburg rule during periods in 1688–1690, 1718–1739, and 1789–1791. Serbian insurgents captured the town and fortress in June 1804, but Ottoman forces retook them in 1813. Between 1805 and 1807, Smederevo again served as a center of the renewed Serbian state.
War damage and modern preservation
During World War I, bombardment heavily damaged the fortress, including fire from 42-centimeter guns during the Austrian crossing of the Danube. In World War II, German forces used it to store ammunition. An explosion on June 5, 1941, killed approximately 2,500 people, injured or traumatized about 5,500, damaged much of Smederevo, and destroyed a substantial part of the southern wall. Allied bombing in 1944 caused further damage.
Restoration, conservation, archaeological investigation, and architectural research have continued since at least 1970, with most work carried out between 1970 and 1995. Archaeological investigations followed the restoration of the town in 1994–1995. Restoration begun in 2010 was not completed as planned, and work on the Jezava wall continued in 2015.
The Iron Gate dam, completed in 1972, raised the lower Danube’s water level and increased flooding. A flood-protection system was built between 1970 and 1980, but severe flooding returned in 2006 after heavy rainfall and snowmelt. Higher groundwater, air pollution, vegetation, urban encroachment, the railway south of the fortress, and inadequate maintenance continue to threaten the remains.
Smederevo Fortress has been protected as a state monument since 1946 and was declared a Monument of Culture of Exceptional Importance in 1979. It was placed on UNESCO’s tentative World Heritage list in 2010, and preparation of documentation for a possible World Heritage inscription was continuing in 2024. The fortress and its surroundings preserve evidence of historical development from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries, including the history of the medieval Serbian state and the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Its history also gave rise to traditions such as the epic poem Starina Novak and Prince Bogosav. The poem claims that people fled to the forests and became hajduci, armed outlaws or irregular fighters in the Balkans, to escape taxation and forced labor. The precise relationship between those hajduci and the construction of the fortress remains uncertain.
Remains
Smederevo Fortress stands on the right bank of the Danube, on a triangular plain at the confluence of the Danube and Jezava rivers, approximately 72 meters above sea level and about 45 kilometers southeast of Belgrade. It covers approximately 11.3 hectares, while another 1975 measurement gives 11.3272 hectares for the inner and outer cities. Including the outer walls and towers, the area is approximately 14.5 hectares. The larger enclosure has an irregular triangular plan, with sides of about 550 meters along the Danube, 400 meters along the Jezava, and 502 meters toward the modern city.
A smaller irregular triangle at the northern apex forms the inner city, or Small City. The surrounding enclosure is the fortified suburb, or Great City. The complex follows Byzantine traditions and was partly modeled on the fortifications of Constantinople. It is a water fortress, protected by the Danube, the Jezava, and an artificial water-filled ditch connecting the two rivers, although its foundations were not built in the water.
The Small City
The Small City was the specially fortified residence of Đurađ Branković and his family. A low wall and water defenses enclosed a residence, palace, reception or throne hall, treasury, auxiliary buildings, a central stone-built well, and the Donjon Tower, the principal defensive tower. Three gates served the enclosure, one facing the settlement and two opening toward the Danube near the donjon. The southwest entrance used a double-gate system. Some interpretations place the settlement gate later than the two Danube-side entrances.
Palace and audience hall
The palace extended along the moat wall, while the throne hall stood against the Danube wall. The audience hall had four sets of high double-arched windows in its stone Danube-facing wall. Their forms combine Gothic and Romanesque elements. The palace is largely lost, with its foundations remaining standing, and the audience hall survives as the outline of its foundations.
Donjon Tower
The Donjon Tower formed the final line of defense. Its walls were more than 4 meters thick, and it provided shelter for the nobility during Ottoman attacks. Hidden doors in the Jezava wall allowed movement toward Hungary.
Inscription and tower defenses
A large brick inscription on a Small City tower names Đurađ Branković as the builder and gives the construction year as 6938 in the Byzantine calendar, a medieval system counting years from the creation of the world according to Byzantine Christian tradition. This corresponds to the stated construction period of 1428–1430. An immured cross above the inscription gives the tower the names Krstata Tower and Krstača. The inscription type is described as rare on former Byzantine territory and unique in the former Yugoslavia.
The first buildings of the Small City were constructed largely of wood. After the Serbian Despotate was restored through the Peace of Szeged in 1444, wooden buildings were replaced with stone, and some towers were strengthened to carry artillery. A lower tower known as the Tower of the Nine Brothers and Seven Brothers was added as a grain store.
Walls, towers, and water defenses
Approximately 1.5 kilometers of crenellated walls surround the fortress. They are generally more than 2 meters thick, while the most heavily built sections reach approximately 4 to 4.5 meters. The fortress has 25 major square towers, six in the Small City and nineteen in the Great City. Small City towers are approximately 11 meters wide and about 20 meters high, while the general tower height is also given as approximately 25 meters.
The Danube and Jezava bounded two sides of the fortress. The Jezava has since been redirected away from the wall. Two defensive moats were built on the third side, one around each city, while the area south of the outer walls remained open. Much of the outer escarpment, a steep defensive slope outside a wall, has disappeared or lies underground. The escarpment along the Danube has been restored and is in good condition.
Later Serbian building phases strengthened the Danube and Jezava defenses. One additional tower was added on the Danube side and three on the Jezava side, although the continuous nature of construction prevents a more precise date. Four further towers were placed on the Danube wall facing Hungary. Their carefully laid stone and red-brick masonry forms red-and-gray Byzantine meanders, unlike the more hastily built rubble-stone defenses. The reasons for, and precise date of, these four towers remain uncertain.
Between 1460 and 1480, the Ottomans added a larger system of escarpments, low walls, and additional towers. In 1480, they built four low artillery towers. One stood at the confluence of the Jezava and Danube, two occupied the other corners of the triangular fortress, and a fourth served as an entrance tower. The entrance tower disappeared in the 1941 ammunition explosion. Fortified trenches were added during the first half of the eighteenth century.
The Great City and sacred complex
The fortified suburb was separated from the Small City by a water-filled moat. It contained buildings for the population and a metropolitan or sacred complex. A ship gate in the Danube wall allowed sailors to enter the fortress. The materials used throughout the complex included lumber, lime, large stones, and brick. Stone came from the former Roman cities of Mons Aureus at modern Seone west of Smederevo, Margum at the mouth of the Great Morava, and Viminacium. Greek and Ragusan workers began the brickwork in spring 1429.
Annunciation Church
The Annunciation Church was begun in the fifteenth century and passed through several historical phases. It measured approximately 19 meters in length and 15.30 meters across at the level of the choir. Its altar table was a masonry pier measuring 1.50 by 1.50 meters. The choir wall and part of the north wall survive, while the western wall is represented by foundations. Its construction indicates that the exterior was plastered.
The church was associated with the relics of Saint Luke the Evangelist, a Christian apostolic figure traditionally associated with the Gospel of Luke. The relics were brought to Smederevo and stored in a church within the fortress. Archaeological work in 2012 found a grave in the northern part of the sacred complex containing the remains of a woman and gold earrings bearing the coat of arms of the Nemanjić dynasty, the medieval ruling dynasty that established and consolidated the Serbian kingdom.
Ottoman bathhouse
The Ottomans added a hamam, a public or institutional Turkish bathhouse, in the seventeenth century. Only minimal remains survive. Archaeological excavation and research have focused particularly on the bathhouse and the sacred complex.
Condition and surrounding setting
The inner-city palace remains are partly restored and stable, although vegetation growth and maintenance remain problems. Many surrounding towers have collapsed or require further work. A corner tower behind the inscription tower, part of the Danube wall, and sections of the southern wall have received conservation. The southern wall is stable, although some of that conservation is considered poor.
The Danube-side escarpment has suffered repeated partial collapses and restoration. The southern wall has also been restored several times as part of the river levee. In the fortified suburb, sections of wall are missing, and several towers lean or are partly collapsed. Modern development constrains the wider setting, including a marina on the eastern side, a railway to the south, and other urban structures.
