Drazevici

Skender Pasha of Genoa stopped on the plateau below Mount Zlatar in 1530 while traveling from Bosnia to Constantinople, found the wooded terrain so beautiful that he ordered a town built there. The settlement that became Nova Varoš anchored a merchant caravan route, and villages like Draževići developed in its administrative orbit. The region had earlier belonged to the Raška state founded by Stefan Nemanja in the 12th century, making the Zlatar highlands a palimpsest of Serbian medieval and Ottoman commercial geography.

Draževići sits within one of Serbia's most dramatic natural landscapes. The Uvac Special Nature Reserve (7,500 hectares, two-thirds in Nova Varoš municipality) protects canyon meanders carved through limestone by the Uvac River. The reserve's griffon vulture population recovered from 7 individuals in 1990 to approximately 500 by 2020—now the largest colony in the Balkans—after conservationists opened the Manastirina feeding station in 1994. Zlatar Lake, created by an 83-meter earth dam in the 1960s (once Europe's highest), anchors the regional hydroelectric infrastructure.

The 2002 census recorded 419 inhabitants in Draževići, a population level that reflects the broader Zlatar region's modest agricultural economy. Tourism development centered on Zlatar's status as an 'air spa' and the Uvac canyon's spectacular meanders has increased visitor traffic since the 1968 opening of Hotel Panorama. By 2026, Draževići's trajectory depends on whether nature-based tourism creates local employment or whether continued youth emigration reduces the village to seasonal occupation.