Cuprija

Ćuprija exists because the Morava River needs crossing—and because Romans needed a granary. They called it Horreum Margi, "Granary of the Morava," a fortified depot on the road from Constantinople to Rome. The flat valley floor that made grain storage practical also made flooding inevitable; today Ćuprija remains the only town on the Great Morava's banks, suffering regular inundation that other settlements learned to avoid. The Turkish name—from köprü, "bridge"—captured the town's essential function: a crossing point where the empire's military road forded Serbia's largest river system.

Navigation made the medieval town prosperous. Until the early 19th century, barges carried goods down the Morava to the Danube and on to European markets; Ćuprija sat at the navigable limit, where river trade met overland transport. When the Morava silted and railways arrived, the town's competitive advantage evaporated. What remained was agriculture: the 1853 founding of Dobričevo farm, the 1899 Agricultural School, the 1911 Sugar factory. Today, the Agricultural and Nursing College are the main employers in a town of 16,500.

By 2026, Ćuprija's challenge is common to Morava valley settlements: how to capture value from the corridor traffic between Belgrade (150 km north) and Niš (90 km south) without becoming simply a place people pass through. The bridges that defined its name still define its economy.