Gukos

Gukoš exists because it was the original settlement from which the town of Ljig later emerged—a parent village that gave birth to a municipal center. By 1818, just three years after the Second Serbian Uprising established autonomous Serbia, Gukoši had grown to 50 homes, recorded as the area's primary settlement when Austrian records mentioned nothing here a century earlier.

The village sits in the Kolubara valley between Mount Rajac and Mount Rudnik, terrain whose medieval significance is marked by the Vavedenje Monastery ruins—believed to contain the sarcophagi of Serbian despots Stefan Branković and Đurađ Branković from the fifteenth century. Local legend claims Đurađ's wife Jerina, a controversial figure in Serbian oral tradition, was buried there as well. The Dići church, founded by nobleman Vlgdrag (buried 1327), adds another layer to the medieval settlement pattern.

Modern development inverted the village-town relationship. When the Lajkovac-Gornji Milanovac railroad was built in 1911-1917, a station rose near what became Ljig center. In 1922, Ljig formally separated from Gukoši, and by 1930 had built its own school, health center, and church—infrastructure that established Ljig as the municipal seat rather than its parent village. The Battle of Kolubara (December 1914)—one of WWI's most significant Serbian victories—was fought in this landscape, memorialized by a monument on Rajac Mountain.

Gukoš today remains a village within Ljig municipality's 10,711-person territory, positioned as a rural settlement within its own historical offspring's administrative jurisdiction. By 2026, the village's trajectory depends on whether the Kolubara District's proximity to Belgrade (approximately 80 kilometers) can sustain rural populations, or whether the inversion that made Ljig the center and Gukoš the periphery continues concentrating people in the municipal town.