Pirot (eng)

1) PIROT is situated in the SE Serbia, 300km away from Belgrade, and 70 km from Nis, 80 km from Sofia. Surface of the municipality is 1232km2, and in 2011 it was populated by 58000 inhabitants. Pirot was on the route of Roman military road (Via militaris) constructed in 33 AC, and it passed through the town by its one branch. Nowadays. The ancient settlement of Tures (Latin for flowers) was first cited in the Tabula Peutingeriana, a 4th century Roman map. Today, this comprises the area of modern day Pirot. The settlement was established to control and protect the main road in this part of the Empire. Travelers would stop in Pirot to rest and to change horses and carriages. Since Tures was not mentioned again in the centuries that followed, there is very little that is known about the region during that time.

The main watter current is he river Nisava of total length 218, the length of the flow in Serbia 151 km. Dominant mountain is old mountain ( the peak Midzor 2168 m).

Pirot is a multiethnic town of diligent people, open for cooperation with its neighbours.

More information on : http://www.ledo.pirot.rs/

The official site of the municipality http://www.pirot.rs/index.php/rs

On some characteristics of Pirot speech

Pirot speech belongs to Prizren-Timok dialect between Timok in the North and Prizren in the South, more precisely South of Zajecar along boundary with Bulgaria and Macedonia to Prizren and Djakovica, via Kosovo to Stala’ and over Rtanj to Timok.

It’s inerestiong that the speech because of its peculiarities was not included in Stokavski Serbian dialect because of its similarities to Bulgarian and Macedonian. Nevertheless, it’s doubtless that it is one of the oldest Stokavski dialects, not included in stem of literary language, but it’s also very important for studying of development of Serbian language.The most important characteristics of the speech are lack of developed accent system. Instead of four, there is only one accent stressed in the last syllable. Declension is minimized to two or three cases instead of literature seven ones. Comparison of adjectives is analytic – instead of comparative suffix, there is a prefix added in front of the positive form. Infinitive as verb form is almost out of usage.

In Pirot speech the old half vowel is not trabsformed into vowel a, (∂ in English does not exist in Serbian literary language). Consonant l was not transformed into vowel o etc.

So called postpositive article is characteristic (there is no article in Serbian – note of the interpreter) added as a suffix to words (Macedonian).

Olivera Velickovic Lilic

2) House of Culture – Travel organization Pirot (http://topirot.com) – Cedomir krstic Galery – Ponisavlje’s Museum (http://www.dkpirot.rs/)

3) House of Culture – Travel organization – Ethnographic museum – Gradic.

3.1) Pirot town ( Citadel, Kale, gradic, Momcilo’s town) is a masonry military fortress, which started to be constructed around 1250 (finished 150 years later). In 1344, Serbian Duke Momcilo rogued of Byzantium czar John VI Kantacusine and proclaimed himself independent prince and ruled in Pirot Gradic. The fortress is situated by the right river bank of The Bistrica, on a separated rock by Sarlah hill. It is constructed in three entities: The upper 50x35m, The Middle 70x60m and The Lower town 180x130m.

4) House of Culture – Travel organization Pirot - Pazar –

HRIST’S BIRTH TEMPLE or The Olad curch is situated in Cirilo and Metodie street, built up by permission – Ferman in 1834.

Tiabara Church, Congregational church in Tiabara, Pirot, Uprising of Holly Mother, is situated in the part of town called Tiabara. The Congregational church was being built from 1868 to 1871, by charities of “pious Orthodox Christians of town of Pirot”.

Greek military cemetery in Pirot, in the hill Metiljavica is a unique Greek military cemetery in Serbia at which 358 soldiers and officers of the third Greek division from Patra Peloponnesus were buried. After Bulgarian capitulation in the First World War, by the decision of Alliance supreme command, Greek division commanded by the general Nikolas Trikupis was allocated at the area of the villages Izvor, Gnjilan, Veliki Suvodol and Temska, with a task to monitor the situation in this part of Serbia, occupied by Bulgaria in the First World War. The soldiers died of frost, as well as of “Spanish fewer” and typhus. The municipality Pirot permanently conceded part of cemetery to Greece on 12th September 1924. In the same year, a monument in T shape, 10 meters high, made of white Greek marble, was built up representing marching Greek soldiers, with two circles symbolizing Greek and Serbian people marching together during centuries, with incised verses:” FOR BATTLE AND GOOD YOU DIED FOR, SERBIA BECAME OUR MOTHER, A LAUREL BRANCH BOSOMING SERB AND GREEK, A BRANCH FED BY YOUR BLOOD, NEVER WITHERING.” Every year, on the day of breakthrough of the Salonika front, representatives of Pirot, Serbia and Greece mark the friendship of the Greeks and the Serbs.

5) House of Culture – Travel organization Pirot - Jewish street, Jewish ritual bathroom – moniument

Jewish ghetto, mahala, was mostly populated by the Jewish, “Sephards” in the part of Pirot (Pazar), behind the Rabin’s mansion and today’s Post office building. The first Synagogue was built in XVI century, New Karl, restored around 1932 with a Jewish school MELDAR and a small ritual bath Mikve” in its yard. Bulgarian conquerors arrested all Jewish people in Pirot in 1943, and then took 178 men, women and children to the railway station, and transported them to the death camp Treblinka.

6) House of Culture – Travel organization Pirot – Pirot fountains – Lower’s bridge – fountain Gusevica (so called “Love tour”)

6.1) GRAN LELA’S BRIDGE is one of the bridge built on the stream Bokludze which was running through Pirot in the Turkish period. By history, this little bridge is ancestor of “lovers’ dates of the time”

Gusevica fountain is situated in the part of Pirot called Tijabara, built by a Turkish mand Agusa, who fell in love with a girl from Pirot, more than 200 years ago it was the only way to see his “secret love” every time she went for water.

6.2) “DAG SPRING” is a termal, hot spring in the valley of the Gradasnica (“Dobrodolska”) river about 3km of NE of the village gradasnica and about 5km North of Pirot in the part of so called “Gradasnicka terma”. There are several hot springs at 466 to 470m. The springs belomg to termal source and are of various types. The temperature of the springs is from 21.5-30◦ C, and mineralization originates from eruptive rocks and gasses. The springs have a low radiation and they are healing with sromach, rheumatic and skin deseases. The old legend tells about miraculous healing of a girl Daga, by who the name was given to.

7) House of Culture – Travel organization Pirot – The first of May – Tigar (so called “Industrial tour”)

Clothes factory First of May Pirot s. a. Pirot founded in 1958. by the end of 1958. By the end of 1960ties the plant was upgraded, and in 1978 it opened: nursery school, museum, library, the firt computer introduced in production, and the surroundings with the park, pigeons, peacocks, deer, mosaics, sculptures, the company was the cheaf sponsor of town’s second league football team “Radnicki”.

Rubber footwear plant Tigar was founded in 1937 by Dimitrije Gaga ladenoviuc and brothers Cekic. Today there are two corporations “Tigar tires” (in 2014 the third exporter in Serbia) and the corporation Tigar lc”.

8) House of Culture – Travel organization Pirot – sports hall (sport and other manifestations”): More on the site of Travel organization Pirot: http://topirot.com/events