Pakrac

Pakrac is a town of western Slavonia, once guarded by a medieval fortress belonging to the Knights Hospitaller. In the thirteenth century a mint here struck the silver Slavonian banovac, a coin bearing the image of a marten. The priors of the order resided in the castle, making Pakrac a centre of the extensive Hospitaller lands in the region.

Pakrac remained part of the Priory of Vrana until the Ottoman advance reached it in 1544. The town later gave its name to a frontier sanjak, whose administration was based here for a time in the sixteenth century. Ottoman and Habsburg forces fought over Slavonia for generations; Pakrac finally passed from Ottoman control in 1691, during the great war that followed the siege of Vienna.