Geographical position
Banat region
Banat is an area in the Pannonian plain, in the south-eastern part of Europe. It covers an area in Hungary (a smaller part), Romania (21,800 km2) and in Serbia, and the total area’s 30,680 km2.
Identity card: The Serbian part of Banat is the biggest of the three regions that make Vojvodina (Banat, Bačka, Srem) and its total area is 8,97 km2. It is an exceptionally plain area, where Deliblatska sandy terrain and Vršac Hill (641m) are. There are 177 towns of Pannonian type of which thirty with more than 5,000 inhabitants. The total number of the population is 750,000. The biggest town is Zrenjanin, where the Serbs make 65%, than Hungarians and Romanians.
History
This area was already inhabited in the early Neolithic period and it was a part of Roman province Dacia. From the 10th century is was under the Hungarians. From 1527 to 1717 under the Turks, then Austria, and from 1849 to 1860, it was a part of Serbs Dukedom and Tamiš Banat. In 1876 it was under Hungarian reign, and after World War I (1918) it was divided between Yugoslavia and Romania.