Kneževi Vinogradi

Kneževi Vinogradi was founded in the ancient times as a very important strategic settlement in the key position of the main road. The village was a Roman colony named Donatium and this was confirmed by numerous archaeological findings.

 

Kneževi Vinogradi, as one of the oldest settlements in Baranja was mentioned first by this name in the census in 1687, even before the Belje estate was founded. According to these facts, it can be concluded that the village belonged to the family Herceg in the Middle Ages.

 

Once, when the village was a part of the Belje estate, one fifth of the entire area were vineyards producing good wines. In the mid of the 18th century there were various manorial buildings in the village: a building for wine-pressing, distillery, coopery (cooper’s workshop), big manorial cellar (built during the Prince Eugene of Savoy time) with capacity of 700,000 litres and two manorial inns. While peasants used to sell wine and cherries mostly in Slavonia, there were 14 craftsmen working in the village ( a wheelwright, a bootmaker, a furrier, a hatter, tailors, shoe-makers, coopers, blacksmiths ) and six merchants.

 

In 1824 Kneževi Vinogradi was the biggest village on the Belje estate having 1961 inhabitants who used to live in 266 houses. There were three churches in the village, the Reformed church, the Orthodox church with a church tower made of copper and a small Catholic church without the church tower. As the postal road led through Kneževi Vinogradi, there was a post office and not far from that a brickyard was built with a brick kiln for producing tiles for covering roofs. According to the census in 1766, Kneževi Vinogradi was mostly inhabited by Hungarians as members of the Reformed church and Raci, members of the Orthodox church. 

 

According to the census in 1824 the population was a mixture of ethnic communities of Germans, Hungarians, Raci and Šokci.