Velika Plana

Transportation

The main Serbian motorway from Subotica to Niš goes by the town. The town is also an important railroad junction. Twin tracks go south toward Niš, a track goes west to Belgrade, and a track goes north to Mala Krsna junction, where it splits towards Belgrade, Smederevo and Požarevac. This, in combination with the fact that many bus lines form southern Serbia to Belgrade and Vojvodina make a stop at the town bus station, makes Velika Plana an important transportation hub of central Serbia.

Economy

The origins of industry in Velika Plana is connected to its agricultural environment and starts in the 1880s. Before World War II, there were three slaughterhouses-meat processing plants here, first that of Italian citizen of German origin Toni Klefiš (Tony Klefisch), and later that of Germans Christian Scheuß and Wilhelm Schumacher, and the one whose stocks were owned by a group of three larger and seven smaller Serbian entrepreneurs.

After WW II, all this property was nationalised and unified into a huge plant, expanding to include all sorts of food and food-related production, all the way to clothes and duvets with goose down. These have, however, folded in the 1990s with the disastrous events concurrent with the breakdown of ex-Yugoslavia.

Today, main industrial work is a branch of Goša from Smederevska Palanka and the newly opened plant to produce parts for military industry.

Neighbourhoods

Except for the very centre of town, Velika Plana is stretched alongside major roads for miles. Officially it is composed of three townships: Town Mains, Stari Odbor (the Old Downtown), and Bresje. Town Mains is further subdivided into neighbourhoods of Centar, Đurakovac, Kod Železničke (Railway Station area), Gloža-Ciglana (Brick factory area) where a tiny Morava river village has been reconstructed, and Magareća Glava (Donkey Head). There is also a satellite so-called weekend settlement (vikend naselje) next to the Pokajnica monastery between Velika Plana, Staro Selo and Radovanje.

Leisure and historic monuments

In the center of the town is a quaint town park. The town also has few smaller parks.

At the outskirts of the town are three important ecclesiastical monuments: the early 15th century Koporin Monastery where Despot Stefan Lazarević, son of Prince Lazar of the Battle of Kosovo is buried; the early 19th century Pokajnica Monastery built as a sign of repentance (Serbian: pokajanje/покајање) by the murderer of Karađorđe, leader of the First Serbian Uprising and the founder of the Karađorđević royal family of Serbia and later Yugoslavia; as well as a small church built by King Alexander Karađorđević of Yugoslavia at the exact place of his ancestor's murder.

The latter two are within 4 kilometres (2 miles) from each other, and easily reachable by public transit. Koporin is more secluded but still within 11 km (7 mi) from the other two.

Education and Research

Velika Plana has three elementary schools in the town itself: Sveti Sava (previously Moša Pijade), Karađorđe (previously Мiloš Mitrović), and Nadežda Petrović, and 11 in the surrounding suburbs and villages.

It also has three high schools: a gymnasium, a technical high school and a business assistant high school.

The Veterinary centre Velika Plana started artificial insemination in cows in 1957 and later expanded to other livestock and claims to be one of the leading centres of its kind in South-Eastern Europe.

Rock Festival

Since 2009 a festival of rock music Plana Demo Fest has been organised under sponsorship of the Velika Plana Youth Community Centre. With more and more bands appearing each year, and the first foreign participants in 2011, its organisers hope that it shall become a springboard for youth rock bands in Serbia. [2]

Interesting events

The first general meeting of the Devotionalist Brotherhood (sr:Богомољачки покрет) when controversial and recently canonised bishop Nikolaj Velimirović was established as a leader of that movement, was held "in the vicinity of Velika Plana" from where they marched to the Old Church of Krnjevo.

The notorious hitman for the UDBA, Željko Ražnatović Arkan was officially promulgated into a "freedom fighter" by Slobodan Milošević's secret police at a ceremony, opposed by the Pokajnica Monastery monks, which took place in the immediate vicinity of the monastery right after the liturgical service. This took place on 11 October 1990.

In 2000 Serbia's Democratic Party held annual conference at the Pokajnica Hotel conference centre in Velika Plana, in the immediate vicinity of the Pokajnica Monastery at which the programme for the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević was first officially proclaimed. In due course it was carried out that same year.

Famous people

International relations

Velika Plana is twinned with:

At the time of SFR Yugoslavia it was also twinned with:

but the relationship with these two has dwindled away and has not been revived as yet.