Nuštar

Nuštar lies between Vinkovci and Vukovar at a road junction that has shaped the settlement for centuries. Its historic core is defined by Khuen-Belassy Castle, a manorial ensemble comprising the Large and Small castles, service buildings, the Church of the Holy Cross and an extensive park. The church was built in 1737 using material from an older Benedictine monastery and a ruined church, and it served as the parish church within the estate. Much of Nuštar’s present layout emerged in the eighteenth century: a former riding avenue linked the castle to Zverinjak, the estate’s hunting ground beside an old meander of the Vuka. The village also preserves the ruins of St Anne’s Church, built in 1726 on the site of the former Holy Spirit monastery, and the 1906 Chapel of St Florian in the cemetery. Protected in 1971 as a monument of park architecture, the castle grounds help reveal how residence, church, landscaped park and the long Slavonian village street formed a single planned ensemble.

Nuštar was shaped not around a conventional square but along the meeting point of old routes towards Vinkovci, Vukovar and villages south of the Vuka. Khuen-Belassy Castle stands beside the road on a slight rise, and its Baroque axis once continued towards the Zverinjak hunting ground. The Large and Small castles, Holy Cross Church, service buildings and park together formed the estate’s administrative, religious and economic centre. Long rows of gable-fronted houses gave Nuštar a distinctive Slavonian streetscape before the destruction of 1991. The surviving park remains the essential green setting for reading the manor complex as a unified historic landscape.