Ciacova

Sister cities

• Saint-Pardoux-la-Rivière
• Masi Torello

History

Ciacova first appears in written history in 1220, when Count Bebich named a certain Chak in his will. After 1389, when the battle of Kosovo Polje took place on 28 June, the Serbs were defeated by the Turks, and thousands of Serb families fled across the Danube and settled in southern Hungary and Banat; this is how the first Serbs appeared in Ciacova. They formed a separate settlement near the existing town, named Tót-Csák in Hungarian or Csakova in Serbian. Tót means "Slovak" in Hungarian, but Tótorság means Slavonia, as most settlers were Serbs from Drava–Sava area. Between 1392–1395, a fortress was built here, The conquest of Banat by the Habsburgs brought a new direction for the development of the small market town. After 1722, the town was heavily colonized by Germans (Swabians) but also Austrians, Czechs, Slovaks, Luxembourgers, Croats, etc. In 1807, the Ciacova-based Religious Fund was established, which aimed to colonize Hungarians in the Győr, Moson and Szeged areas. But the Hungarians did not become as numerous as the Romanians and Germans. The latter left the town en masse until 1992. Throughout its history, Ciacova has been a seat of district, plasă, raion and plain town. According to Law no. 83/2004, starting with April 2004, Ciacova received the status of town.

Geography

Ciacova is located in the Timiș Plain, on Timișul Mort River, about southwest of Timișoara. The relief is flat, with a slight inclination to the southwest in the divagation area of Banat rivers to the Tisa. The Timiș Plain is an accumulation plain originally connected to the Pannonian Plain, formed in the Quaternary by the waters that clogged the Pannonian Lake. This lake was formed by the sinking of a part of the Carpathians in the Mesozoic. There is only slight dishevelment in the plain. There are small depressions (cenotes), remnants of lakes, ponds or swamps that existed here until the 18th century, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire executed a vast plan of drainage and damming. Today, the remains of these ponds can be seen in the field in the form of slightly deepened circles that are whiter than the black plowed land; these are the so-called salt marshes. In the Ciacova area, the surface of the various forms of microrelief is occupied 85% by field, 2.5% by cenotes, 3% by valleys, 2% by terraces, 1% by riverbed sands, 0.8% by dry lakes, 0.5% by floodplain and 5.2% by roads, streets and ditches. Hydrologically, the territory of Ciacova belongs to the reception basin of Timiș. More precisely, Ciacova is located on the left bank of Timișul Mort. Timișul Mort ("Dead Timiș") is the old and natural valley of the Timiș River in the puszta area of Banat. It "died" in the 18th century with the drainage of the Banat swamps, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire artificially created the current anthropic valley of the Timiș by Cebza, Macedonia, etc. Timișul Mort is today a swampy area with small waterholes, ponds full of helophyte plants, rushes, reeds, duckweeds, etc. From a climatological point of view, Ciacova is part of the Tisa climate, i.e., a moderate continental…