Serbian medieval urban settlements

Abstract

This research paper should point out general characteristics of Serbian medieval towns with special review of their formation, development and disappearance and short comparison with general characteristics of medieval towns in other parts of Europe. The fairly poor literature dealing with the study of towns in medieval Serbia has had an influence on the fact that the causes of medieval town genesis are searched for throughout Europe, thus a connection between these two occurrences is attempted to be established as well as the possibility to draw a comparison between them. This paper has attempted to find the common causes for the formation, development and disap­pearance of towns of a medieval type in Serbia including causes such as migrations, wars or other causes of a political and economic type. Also, the main reasons for the significant deterioration and destruction of medieval type towns have been pointed out, yet not only in Serbia, but also on the territory of the entire Southeastern Europe as well as in the countries of Western Europe and Central Europe. The previously mentioned reasons have a direct influence on the decreased possibility for the revitalization of those towns for modern, mainly touristic purposes.