TOWERS AND FORTRESSES - FORTIFICATION ILOK, 14TH - 15TH CENTURY

ILOK On the right banks of the Danube, on a raised plateau on the western slopes of Fruška Gora, we find the proud and stubborn town of Ilok – a fortress together with a monastery and church with a Neo-Gothic spire. The picturesque and lush surroundings along the powerful river Danube always abounded in natural beauty, and have attracted people since times immemorial. It seems that the area had been densely populated starting with the Neolithic, and later Bronze Age and Late Iron Age. The Romans settled there round the 1st and 2nd c. A.D. and built their first border fortress along the river Ister, their Old Roman castrum, Cuccium. After that Slavonic and then Croatian people settled in this area, probably after the collapse of the second Avar khanate, round the year 811, when finally the powerful Avar camp on the Tisza River is dissolved. The Bulgarians, too, ruled Ilok for some time, when finally, in 895 belligerent Hungarian tribes arrived. Croats and Hungarians have lived there since those times in constant contact on this territory. As early as the Middle Ages, starting with the year 1267, Ilok was mentioned as a fortified town under various names: Vilok, Wylok, Iwnlak, Vilak, Vylok, Wyhok, and Wylak. In various historic periods Ilok was the centre of this part of Syrmium (Srijem) and gradually developed into a crafts, trades and marketing centre. In the course of history Ilok was ruled by various feudal lords. At the end of the 13th century “castrum Vylak” was given by the Croatian-Hungarian kings to the noble family Csak. Bishop Ugrin from Kalocsa succeeded in talking Pope Gregorius IX into giving to the Syrmium bishopric its seat in the Benedictine monastery of St.Stephen Martyr near Ilok (present-day Banoštor). Since the year 1365 Ilok was ruled by its best known master, the progenitor of the princes of Ilok, prince Nikola Ilochki, who fortified Ilok, and who was also Bosnian king and minted his money there from 1471 to his death. Along the fortress and the prince’s court, there were several churches and chapels, and in the town there were also a hospital and alms-house. Within the walls there were 6 churches, out of which number only the foundations of the three-aisle St. Peter’s and the foundations of a Gothic church with a polygonal sanctuary and fragments of arch timbers were preserved. Nikola Ilochki, the Banus of “all Slavonia” (totius Sclavoniae) from 1457 to 1463, having perceived the danger of growingly frequent attacks of the Ottomans, started fortifying Ilok, and this is when the fortress and the town got its present-day appearance. The whole town was then surrounded by walls in the form of an extended square whose foundations were built of strong stone and the walls were made of bricks. The walls were fortified by three rectangular towers, three rounded semi-towers, and a cylindrical tower on the north-eastern part (today part of the monastery) as well as a strong bastion on the south-western part. By the type of construction and the building elements, the town has stylistic features of the Late Gothic but also Early Renaissance military architecture, which was a really amazing feature in those times. The Ilok fortress was renovated a few times at the time of the Turkish rule. After having conquered it, the Turks continued fortifying and maintaining the Ilok fortifications, because they had the seat of their military and administrative headquarters (Sandžak) of Syrmium there from 1566 to 1697. From this time there are a few things preserved in the old town: the Turkish bathhouse (hamam) and mausoleum (domed burial site) dedicated to a holy dervish. Since 1697, when the Austrian imperial army snatched Ilok from the Turks and up to the present days, the ancient fortress has lost its military significance, but the town of Ilok and the Croats from Ilok are even today considered to be the Croatian strategic advance-guard against the always unruly and often hostile east. The western part of the fortress is now destroyed; the remaining walls still feature the masterly executed battlement with loopholes. Preserved from the Middle Ages is a Romanesque column with a relief illustration of a 12th century Agnus Dei.