Taor is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

in the

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality ...

Valjevo Valjevo (Serbian Cyrillic: Ваљево, ) is a city and the administrative center of the Kolubara District in western Serbia. According to the 2011 census, the administrative area of Valjevo had 90,312 inhabitants, 59,073 of whom were urban dwel ...

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hung ...

. According to the 2011 census, the village has a population of 303.

History

In the surrounding area there are numerous traces of ancient mining activities, including mining of copper and iron. In November 2019 it was announced that the remains of the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantin ...

church were discovered close to the Taor Springs. Remains of the

Early Byzantium Byzantine Empire under the Constantinian and Valentinianic dynasties was the earliest period of the Byzantine history that saw a shift in government from Rome in the West to Constantinople in the East within the Roman Empire under emperor Constant ...

-style church are part of the wider complex, with parts of small fortification and presumably a mining settlement being located for now. It is located at an altitude of , on the prehistoric and

Antiquity Antiquity or Antiquities may refer to: Historical objects or periods Artifacts *Antiquities, objects or artifacts surviving from ancient cultures Eras Any period before the European Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries) but still within the histo ...

travelling corridor from the valley of the

Kolubara The Kolubara ( sr-cyr, Колубара, ) is a long river in western Serbia; it is an eastern, right tributary to the Sava river. General overview Kolubara is formed by the two small rivers Obnica and Jablanica. ''Obnica'' is the river in W ...

river to the

Užice Užice ( sr-cyr, Ужице, ) is a city and the administrative centre of the Zlatibor District in western Serbia. It is located on the banks of the river Đetinja. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 59,747. The Ci ...

depression. Remains from the Stone Age,

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

, Antiquity and

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

have been found along the corridor. Church dimensions are , it has arched altar area and is surrounded by the

dry stone Dry stone, sometimes called drystack or, in Scotland, drystane, is a building method by which structures are constructed from stones without any mortar to bind them together. Dry stone structures are stable because of their construction me ...

wall made of large chunks of stones and boulders, which is long and wide.

Taor Springs

The village is located on the

Povlen Povlen ( sr, Повлен) is a mountain in western Serbia, located thirty kilometers west of Valjevo. It has several peaks, the three most important being Small Povlen (), Middle Povlen () and Big Povlen (), which is, ironically, the lowest. Ge ...

mountain. One of the attraction of the Povlen are the "Taor Springs" (''Taorska vrela''). Beautiful cascades were used in many touristic brochures in the

Former Yugoslavia The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as SFR Yugoslavia or simply as Yugoslavia, was a country in Central and Southeast Europe. It emerged in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1992, with the breakup of Yug ...

. They are located at the village's hamlet of Donji Taor ("Lower Taor"). It is located in the southwestern section of the mountain, southeast of Valjevo and northwest of

Kosjerić Kosjeríć ( sr-cyr, Косјерић, ) is a town and municipality located in the Zlatibor District of western Serbia. The municipality has a population of 12,090 inhabitants, but the town itself has 3,992. The municipality's area is , with 26 ...

. Majority of the location is covered in

beech Beech (''Fagus'') is a genus of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia, and North America. Recent classifications recognize 10 to 13 species in two distinct subgenera, ''Engleriana'' and ''Fagus''. The ''Engl ...

forests and the location is especially known for

bear's garlic ''Allium ursinum'', known as wild garlic, ramsons, cowleekes, cows's leek, cowleek, buckrams, broad-leaved garlic, wood garlic, bear leek, Eurasian wild garlic or bear's garlic, is a bulbous perennial flowering plant in the amaryllis family Amary ...

, which is abundant. It grows on the shady slopes and in the woods. An annual "Days of Bear's Garlic" festival has been established in 2015. The Taor is known for its

tufa Tufa is a variety of limestone formed when carbonate minerals precipitate out of water in unheated rivers or lakes. Geothermally heated hot springs sometimes produce similar (but less porous) carbonate deposits, which are known as traverti ...

rocks, on which the Taor springs formed cascades on the long slope, which ultimately flow into the

Skrapež Skrapež is a village in the municipality of Vlasotince, Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of th ...

river. In the 1980s. when the Kosjerić waterworks was constructed, the springs were partially capped and transferred to town's water system. Though the project wasn't conducted fully as planned, it still harmed the cascades as during the droughty years, the water dries out completely. The area was placed under the preliminary protection, but on paper only. Locals were digging the tufa stones, ruining the waterfalls and the entire environment. There were 12 watermills on the springs, but as of 2017, none of them are operational, with only a few still physically surviving. By 2019 only three derelict ones remained (Delićka, Drojićka and Pejina), but the fourth one, Pepića watermill, was fully restored and became operational in 2018.

References

Populated places in Kolubara District {{KolubaraRS-geo-stub