Maglič Fortress 36341 Bogutovac Raška District, Maglič, Serbia
Maglič is a medieval Serbian town in the Ibar Gorge, near the village of Bogutovac, 20 kilometers south of the city of Kraljevo. The name of the town comes from the Serbian word "magla" — "fog," which gives it a mysterious appearance.
It is located on top of a cliff, surrounded on three sides by the flow of the Ibar River, at an elevation of about 100 meters from the bottom of the gorge and the old caravan route from Kosovo to northern Serbia, now a highway connecting Kosovo and Metohija with Belgrade.
The town has 8 towers connected by walls and two gates — the main entrance gate and a small gate for sorties. Inside the walls are the remains of residential buildings, the Church of St. George, and water reservoirs.
The exact time of the town’s founding is unknown. According to one version, it was built in the 13th century by Serbian King Uroš I after the Mongol invasion of the Balkan Peninsula, with the purpose of protecting the route deeper into Old Serbia and the monasteries of Sopoćani and Studenica. It is also believed that King Uroš did this as a sign of love for the Frenchwoman and Serbian queen Anđе Angel, widely known as Helen of Anjou (Hélène d'Anjou). He also planted many lilacs in the Ibar valley so that she would feel at home.
According to another version, the town was founded by Uroš I’s father, King Stefan the First-Crowned, to protect the monasteries he established, Žiča and Studenica.
The first written records about this medieval town date back to 1337, from the time of Archbishop Daniel II, who had his residence and built a palace in Maglič. Living there next to the existing structures, he wrote his famous hagiographies and regiographies.
During the Second Serbian Uprising, voivode Radoslav Jelečanin ambushed a group of Turkish soldiers in Maglič and stopped their advance from Novi Pazar.
According to folk legends recorded by the Russian traveler of the late 19th century, Evgeny Markov, the construction of the town is associated with the name of the "Cursed Erina" — the 14th-century queen Erina Branković (born Byzantine princess Irina Kantakouzene):
In the deepest recesses of the gorge, at a sharp bend of the river and the rocky corridor accompanying it, on the summit of a pyramidal mountain, suddenly above our heads against the gloomy background of rain clouds, romantic ruins of walls and towers of a half-ruined castle appeared.
— What castle is this? — we asked the coachman. — What do you call it?
— This is Maglič, the fortress of the cursed Erina the queen! — our coachman replied, glancing disapprovingly at the ruins.
— Why cursed? — I asked curiously.
— Because she tyrannized the people, oppressed them with labor, — the coachman explained convincingly: — on the highest cliffs, where only a bird can fly or a wild goat climb, she decided to build fortresses for herself and set up their garrisons... Every five hours of travel she definitely had a castle built somewhere. So she forced people to carry stones and logs up the steepest cliffs. That’s why she left such a memory of herself that everyone calls her nothing but the cursed Erina, even though she was a queen...
Popular tradition attributes all generally hated orders remembered by the people to Irina. She was a young and beautiful Greek woman, the sister of Sophia Palaiologina, wife of John III, and married one of the insignificant descendants of King Lazar, despot Đurađ Branković, who lived in the 15th century, as the Serbian kingdom lingered in a ghostly existence for about one and a half centuries after Kosovo. Her evil influence was blamed for unpopular, burdensome measures imposed on the Serbs by the old king, her husband, including the heavy duty of building castles in inaccessible places, which was caused by Serbia’s extreme weakness and lack of any security at the time. Therefore, all the castle ruins on the peaks of Serbian mountains, both in the Serbian kingdom and in Turkish Serbia, are still popularly known as the fortresses of the "cursed Erina the queen."
Thus, Maglič also has the popular name "Erina’s Town." The further expansion of the Serbian state southward led to the decline of Maglič’s military role. It became the residence of the Serbian archbishop (since 1324), Daniel II, who managed church and state affairs from Maglič. The town had an organized church manuscript writing center.
It is unknown how and when Maglič came into Turkish hands, but it likely passed to them after the fall of the last Serbian fortress Smederevo and the liquidation of the Serbian Despotate in 1459.
Under Ottoman rule, Maglič became the center of the eponymous Turkish nahiye (province), and in the 16th century, it had a garrison of 10 to 20 soldiers.
At the end of the 17th century, Austrian troops, having penetrated deep into the Balkans, liberated Maglič from the Turks but were eventually forced to retreat back beyond the Danube. The returning Turks reinstated a garrison in the town but soon left, and Maglič was abandoned for many years.
Some restoration work in Maglič was carried out only after World War I.
In 1979, Maglič was recognized as a monument of special cultural importance and has since been under state protection. A large-scale restoration began in Yugoslavia in the late 1980s, but due to the country’s economic crisis and the breakup of Yugoslavia, the work was not completed, and the wooden platforms restored in the towers have since deteriorated.
Since 2006, visiting the fortress has been temporarily closed for visitor safety reasons due to the discovery of rot in the wooden platforms in the towers. At the same time, night lighting was installed on the walls for better visibility of the town walls from the highway at night.
In the fall of 2010, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy and the authorities of the city of Kraljevo announced joint funding for the restoration of Maglič.
Sources:
