History
PRIJEDOR IN THE PAST
Although Prijedor is one of the youngest cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, archaeological researches confirmed that the populating began nearly 5.000 years ago. In pre-Roman and Roman time here lived a tribe of Mezei that would disappear with the Roman Empire from the world stage in the 5th century BC. Over the next 12 centuries different masters ruled these areas: Croats, Hungarians, Austrians and Turks since the 16th century. The mere name of Prijedor, as a fortification, will appear in 1696 during the Austro-Turkish War in letters ,written in Latin, by commander of the Croatian generalate units, Earl Batthyány. After having destroyed this fortification, it took nearly 50 years for Prijedor to appear again in list of settlements. Parallelly with building a small Turkish fortification on artificially made ait, a Christian part of settlement began to develop in the vicinity and whose conjunction marked the faster development of the city as of the second half of the 18th century. Since 1835 there has been a Serbian elementary school in existence. In 1885 the City got the Serbian Church Singing Society "Vila". A faster development of the city has been conditioned by railroad passing through Prijedor in 1873, connecting Banja Luka with Dobrljin which was the first railroad in history of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Another important date for development of the City is 1882, a year when nearly a whole town burnt in a great fire. By bringing the first town - planning scheme in 1901, Austria built a town in spirit of modern Central European towns. In the mere town in the beginning of the 20th century there were a printing company, city reading room, community school, a Sokol ( falcon) society, first tennis, football and handball clubs. The city became the merchant and craft centre in this part of Krajina. In the World War II the City and an entire area of Kozara lost more than 45.000 population amongst whom were 18.000 children. After the World War II, the City had an accelerated development with paper and cellulose factory and Ljubija iron ore pit as the major supporting factors.
Archaeologist: Milenko Radivojac
