TOWERS AND FORTRESSES - FORTIFIED TOWN DUBOVAC, 15TH CENTURY

DUBOVAC The fortified town Dubovac is situated at the north-western part of Karlovac. It is situated on an artificial hillock within the mountainous country above the right bank of the river Kupa, and somewhat further on its hinterland is bordered by the river Dobra, a tributary of the river Kupa. The name of the town indicates that the surrounding area used to be grown all over by oak forests (dub is the Croatian word for an oak species). The fortified structure used to protect the settlement at its foot and the road that led along the bank of the Kupa. The first acknowledgment in the church registers originates from the year 1339, when the settlement was granted its own parish priest. At the time of the Turkish campaigns the settlement used to be repeatedly raided, but the stone fortress remained intact. Dubovac was purchased in 1579 for the needs of the border-land construction board and the military command of the future fortress of Karlovac. Until the arrival of the French in 1809 the fortified town was the property of the generals from Karlovac. The town received its basic shape as early as the 15th century, when the former older wooden material was gradually exchanged for crushed stone. By building an additional storey in the first decades of the 16th century the town reached approximately the level it has nowadays. Four towers enclose the inner yard: a rectangular watch-tower, the main defence point, is approximately two storeys higher than the three round, two-storey towers between which there were widely-developed wings with defence, storage and accommodation space. Two-storey wooden arcades surround the yard where walls of the large round tower can be observed, parts of the former fortress, probably originating from the Roman or even older times. In the middle of the yard there is a draw-well. In the ground-floor of the watch-tower, which was also used as a prison, a narrow window loop-hole is placed. The former entrance to the tower, at the first-storey level, has a cone-shaped Late Gothic arch, and it is possible that the former entrance to the town in the eastern wall, also at the first-storey level, had an entrance in the same shape. The town could be entered only over a draw-bridge. As the fortified town gradually kept losing its significance in terms of defence and accommodation, in the 18th century it was adapted into a storage for gunpowder and guns. In 1837 Count Laval Nugent bought Dubovac and rebuilt it into a residence in the Romantic style (with crenellations on the towers and walls). Its Romantic-style restoration was greatly contradictory to the history of construction so far. Yet, the town walls were made somewhat stronger, and the crumbled parts of the walls and tower could be built up again. For the first time the restoration was considered as a whole in relation to the environment. The spirit of the bourgeois, “revivalist” Croatia embraced the old town of Dubovac as a favourite popular resort. In the period between 1952 and 1961 the town was renovated again, based on the layout design of M.Stier from the year 1657 and a graphic illustration from the end of the 18th century.