Ćukovac (Zemun)

Ćukovac (Ћуковац) is an urban neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is located in Belgrade's municipality of Zemun. Ćukovac is one of several small neighborhoods which constitute the downtown of Zemun, former separate city and today's borough and municipality of Belgrade. It borders the neighborhoods of Gardoš and Muhar (north), Donji Grad (east and south), Kalvarija (south-west), Sava Kovačević (west) and Gornji Grad (north-west). It is generally bounded by the streets of Glavna, Cara Dušana, Bežanijska and Ugrinovačka. Ćukovac is located on the hill of the same name, one of three hills where the old core of the town of Zemun developed. The other two hills are Gardoš, extending to the north, and Kalvarija, extending to the south, creating a crescent hilly formation. The entirely residential neighborhood is known for its short and narrow streets. Name of the hill and the neighborhood, ćukovac, means the "owl hill" (ćuk, an owl). However, Ćukovac, Gardoš and Kalvarija hills are not natural features. Zemun loess plateau is the former southern shelf of the ancient, now dried, Pannonian Sea. Modern area of Zemun's Donji Grad was regularly flooded by the Danube and the water would carve canals through the loess. Citizens would then build pathways along those canals and so created the passages, carving the hills out of the plateau. Today it appears that Zemun is built on several hills, with passages between them turned into modern streets, but the hills are actually manmade. The underground below the hill has been crisscrossed by a network of underground corridors or lagums, dating back from the period of Austrian rule in Zemun. They connect Ćukovac, Muhar, Kalvarija and Gradoš. This terrain is one of the most active landslide areas in Belgrade. Being cut into for centuries, the loess in some sections have cliffs vertical up to 90%. In the previous centuries, settlers left many vertical shafts which ventilated the lagums, drying the loess and keeping it compact.