Kavadarci - a city in the southeastern part of the Povardarie, in southern Macedonia and is the center of Tikvesh. According to some sources, etymologically, the name Kavadarci comes from the Greek word kavadion which means "cloak of precious fabric", and the people of Kavadarci were the makers of that fabric.
Geography
The city is located in the central part of the
valley and the Tikvesh area and is its central place. It is 10 km
west of the nearest town Negotino, 105 km south of the capital
Skopje, and west through the Drenovska Gorge and the Pletvar pass is
connected to Prilep (51 km), which continues to Bitola, Resen and
Ohrid. The city of Kavadarci is located on both banks of the river
Luda Mara, in a north-south direction, and is a flat settlement
located at an altitude of 278 meters.
Traffic
The city
contains ten boulevards: West Boulevard, North Boulevard, Mosha
Pijade, Cvetan Dimov, Veljko Vlahovic, Macedonia, Nikola Minchev,
Blazo Aleksov, Video Smilevski - Bato, and Kocho Racin. Other
important streets in the city are: Ilinden, шкаiшкаka, Seventh of
September, Mito Hadџиivasilev - Jasmin, Viшниeцаnica, Strasho
Pindџur. The city also has eight roundabouts.
History of
Kavadarci
The settlement of Kavadarci was first mentioned in
1519, as a small rural settlement within the Kyustendil Sandzak. In
1664, Evliya Çelebi visited Kavadarci (Tikvesh), who left a record
of the Kavadarci Bazaar, which was then organized city life. He
states that the town is the center of a kaza with 70 living villages
and has 300 roofs with tiled houses. There are four neighborhoods,
three mosques and a beautiful bathroom. There are two markets for
merchants and a bazaar with about 74 shops. Kavadarci was first the
seat of a nahija within the Strumica kaza, and since the 17th
century - is an independent kaza. Education in Kavadarci has deep
roots and a rich tradition, and the first cell schools were opened
in the premises of the Moklic, Polog and Bosha Monasteries during
the 18th and 19th centuries. The settlement is also mentioned in
Turkish documents from 1823. The document mentions Kavadarci as a
small settlement ("kasaba") with about 2,000 inhabitants in the far
eastern part of the then Bitola vilayet. In his article entirely
dedicated to Tikvesh entitled "Ljubljano-Peonia", published in the
"Constantinople Gazette" on February 12, 1855, the Macedonian
educator Jordan Hadzi-Konstantinov - The Giant wrote that the
village of Kavadarci (Govedarci) has a large and beautiful a small
school, three mosques (mosques), a clock (sahat), an old high tower
(pillar) where ayan and kadi sit. This indicates that as early as
the middle of the 19th century Kavadarci was the central place of
the entire Tikvesh area where the court (kadija) and the
administrative authorities were located. The city of Kavadarci began
to develop in the early nineteenth century, but in the vicinity
there are archaeological excavations that indicate that there was a
settlement here in ancient times and in the Middle Ages. Witnesses
from the Middle Ages are the many beautiful medieval churches and
monasteries in the area, especially around the caves on the shores
of Lake Tikvesh.
In mid-July 1894, at the initiative of Dame
Gruev, the second MRO committee was established. The members of the
committee were:
Pane Ivanov - head teacher in the primary school;
Jovanche Velkov - merchant;
Ivanche Minchev - civil servant; and
Janaki Iliev - Kjurchiev - merchant.
To mark that moment, the
Council of the Municipality of Kavadarci in July 1999 erected a
memorial plaque in the city.
Tikvesh Uprising
In June
1913, the city of Kavadarci was one of the centers where the Tikvesh
Uprising broke out, which was the first popular armed resistance
against the new Serbian government. The uprising was provoked by the
violence perpetrated by the Serbian occupying authorities against
the Macedonian population during the efforts for assimilation and
enslavement. With the support of VMRO, an assembly was convened with
delegates from almost all places in Tikvesh where it was unanimously
decided to start an uprising and create an insurgent headquarters,
composed of prominent dukes from that area, among whom were: Doncho
Lazarov, Mihail Shkartov, Koce Seizov, Dime Pindzurov, Todor Kamchev
and others. About 1,000 insurgents took part in the uprising, 200 of
whom were ordinary citizens holding rifles, and the rest were
comites from VMRO detachments. The uprising started on June 19,
1913, in addition to Negotino and Kavadarci, about fifty villages in
the Tikves area were liberated. Doncho Lazarov and Mihail Shkartov's
detachments attack and expel the Serbian armies from Negotino.
Serbian authorities send their troops from nearby villages to
Negotino, but they are all defeated. The insurgents continue and
manage to expel the Serbian officials and scribes from the municipal
building in Kavadarci and lowering the Serbian flag, they set up the
Tikvesh revolutionary flag. On June 20, a solemn assembly was held
at which a city administration composed of 12 prominent citizens of
Kavadarci was elected, and the freedom lasted only 7 days. On June
25, Serbian soldiers suppressed the uprising, set fire to much of
Kavadarci, and, among other things, over 60 shops and wealthy houses
were looted.
Memorial ossuary
The memorial ossuary in Kavadarci is a
monumental monument that symbolizes an old Macedonian house that is
the eternal home of fallen fighters. It houses the remains of the
killed fighters from Kavadarci, victims of the fascist terror of the
National Liberation War in the period from 1941-1945, which were
located near Kavadarci. Inside it, their names are inscribed on
granite slabs. The memorial ossuary is made of concrete. It was
discovered on September 7, 1976. It is the work of the professor at
the Faculty of Architecture in Skopje, Petar Mulichkovski.
The building is located at an altitude of 305 meters and from there
you can see the panorama of Kavadarci and Tikvesh. It is a stylized
Macedonian house fenced with concrete walls 3 meters thick. The
lower bracket represents the inner courtyard of the house which
continues into the outer courtyard in the form of an amphitheater.
The lower part is entered through two iron doors (south and north)
on which clusters are presented. They lead to the open part of the
ossuary where the gallery of the heroes is located. In the past, the
walls were empty and housed the relics of the dead, but in recent
years their coffins have been moved to the city museum for
protection. Here are twenty formed marble slabs with more than three
hundred names written on them, namely 328 names of fighters who died
in the National Liberation War. Then, through a staircase in the
middle of the building that leads spirally upwards, one enters the
closed part with a height of 12 meters, which is a stylized
Macedonian house inspired by an Ohrid house. This closed part is
divided into two floors that are associated with verandas whose
walls have openings that symbolize the windows.
Economy and
transport
The population in the city, and in the whole region in
general, is mostly engaged in viticulture. The most important
commercial buildings are the Tikvesh Winery, the Metallurgical Plant
for Ferronickel "FENI", the Industry for Construction Materials and
Steel Structures "IGM", the tobacco factory "Alliance One Macedonia
AD", the factory "Metalex", and more recently in huge There are many
private wineries and wineries such as "Chekorov", "Popov" and
others. Recently, the economy in Kavadarci has been growing with the
construction and opening of the German factory for parts in the
automotive industry "Drexlmeier" which employs about 6,000 people
from Kavadarci and the surrounding towns of Negotino, Prilep and
Veles.
In the city there is a Bus Station - Kavadarci which
transports passengers to and from Skopje, Veles, Negotino, Prilep,
Resen, Ohrid, Struga, Strumica, Demir Kapija, Valandovo, Gevgelija,
Belgrade, Sofia.
Tourism
Museum-gallery
Museum-Gallery from Kavadarci as an institution in the field of
culture was established by a decision of the Assembly of the
Municipality of Kavadarci on September 7, 1973. On September 6,
1976, with the opening of the art exhibition of the Slovenian
painter Mario Vilhar, he officially started working.
The
museum-gallery is an institution open to the public, has an
educational role, in order to develop interactive communication with
visitors, and through the presentation of movable and immovable
heritage to attract a wider audience.
The museum includes an
archeological, ethnological, historical department, a department for
protection of cultural monuments, a department for art history and a
gallery where a dozen exhibitions take place annually, a memorial
room for Vasil Hadzimanov and a memorial room for Nikola Badev. The
museum also has several permanent exhibits: archeological,
ethnological, historical exhibits and exhibits for traditional food
and wine preparation.
Wine Museum
In 2002, a local Wine
Museum for the Tikvesh-Kavadarci region was opened in the city park
in Kavadarci, where the history of the Tikvesh Region in the
production of grapes and wine is presented in several exhibitions.
Among the exhibits are a device for measuring the sugar content in
wine from 1534, the so-called refrigerator - ledar from 1934 in
which ice was once carried from the so-called ledars from the
locality, Bear's hole near Kavadarci. In addition to museum exhibits
and photographs, the museum also has a collection of wines for
tasting.