Karlovac is a town in Croatia, the administrative center of
Karlovac County. It is located in central Croatia, 56 km southwest
of Zagreb and 130 km northeast of Rijeka. It is located on the
Dinaric edge of the Pannonian Plain, and it is from the Karlovac
area that the hilly and mountainous part towards the Mediterranean
begins.
It is located at the intersection of important road
and railway routes from Zagreb to Rijeka and Split.
In
addition to numerous parks and green areas, which is why it bears
the epithet "city of parks", the peculiarity of Karlovac are four
rivers that pass through the city - Korana, Kupa, Dobra and Mrežnica
for which it is known as a city on four rivers.
Karlovac is a relatively young settlement whose exact
date of origin is known - July 13, 1579. It was founded as a
fortress to protect against Turkish conquests, in the plain at the
mouth of the Korana in the Cup, at the foot of the old fort Dubovac.
It was named after its founder, the Austrian Archduke Karl. It was
built according to the idea of an ideal Renaissance city in the
shape of a six-pointed star with a central square and streets that
intersect at right angles.
From its founding until 1693, the
city of Karlovac was under military administration, and only then
did it gain limited self-government. It became a free royal city in
1776.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, mostly thanks to
the flourishing of trade and shipping in the Cup, Karlovac was known
as one of the richest and most developed Croatian cities. This is
evidenced by the fact that at the beginning of the 19th century it
was the people of Karlovac who paid the highest tax of all Croatian
cities. The Party of Rights established its branch in Karlovac on
April 13, 1896. It proved successful, because from 1896 to 1920, it
gave Karlovac four mayors (Josip Vrbanić, Ivan Banjavčić, Božidar
Vinković and Gustav Modrušan). In that period, Karlovac was among
the most important cities in Croatia in terms of industry and
publishing.
At the beginning of the Homeland War, the town of
Karlovac was almost an occupied town because the then Yugoslav
People's Army (JNA) had 19 military facilities with deployed
military forces in and around it. With proper and wise organization
of the resistance, all barracks in the city and the surrounding area
were conquered, and the army was evicted from the city, but the
process did not go smoothly. The city and its inhabitants
experienced the most difficult moments from mid-October 1991 to
January 1992, when they were exposed to shelling on a daily basis. A
particularly difficult three-day attack in an attempt to conquer the
city was on October 4, and the city was again in great uncertainty
when the enemy JNA, with the help of insurgent Serbs, pulled heavy
weapons and machinery from the barracks at the Camp. In the period
up to January 1992, 255 people were killed and more than a thousand
were injured.
Violent attacks followed in May 1992, in July
and September 1993, and in May and August 1995. The city and its
environs were definitely liberated on August 7, 1995.
A part
of the video for the song Earth Song by the American singer Michael
Jackson in 1995 was recorded in Karlovac.