Kragujevac (population 200,000)-city in Serbia and capital of the Sumadija region,located on the Lepenica River. It is known for its weapon/munitions and car factory, Zastava, which produces Yugo automobiles. University of Kragujevac(f.1976) is located here,but it is worth mentioning that the first University in Serbia was founded in this city in 1838,as well as the first Grammar school,Printworks(both in 1833),Theatre(1834) and Military school(1837);in this period(1818-1839) Kragujevac was the capital of a Domain of Serbia,during the reign of Serbian prince Milos Obrenovic.
Kragujevac experienced a lot of historical turbulence,not always without severe casulties-first mentioned in some turkish documents from the 15th century,as a "village of Kragujevdza"(name comes after the bird griphon-"kraguj" in Serbian),Kragujevac has undergone a number of ordeals,and the worst must be the massacre of strictly males and a number of schoolchildren in WWII, when Nazis shot 7000 people on October 21, 1941 retaliating for a partisan attack on German soldiers - 50 people for one wounded, 100 for a dead soldier. Among the killed is a whole generation of boys taken directly from the school. The monument for the executed pupils is a symbol of the city. This atrocity has inspired a poem Krvava bajka (Bloody fairy tale) by Desanka Maksimovic, well known female poet from the former Yugoslavia.
The architectural momentum of Kragujevac is rather interesting,displaying fusion of two diametrically different styles-traditional turkish(nowadays almost completely gone) and 19th century german "secessionist"-style;naturally,modern conceptions has not passed by Kragujevac,but they were manifestly influenced by the architectural thought of communist "soc-realism".