Sviniţa

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Location of Sviniţa commune
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Location of Sviniţa commune

Sviniţa (Serbian: Свињица or Svinjica) is a commune in Mehedinţi County, Romania, located on the Danube (in the area of Banat known as Clisura Dunării - Banatska Klisura in Serbian). In 2002, its population was mostly composed of Serbs (87.27%). [1]

The name Svinjica means "the pig place" or "little pig" in Serbian. Most of the inhabitants of the commune (92.49%) are Old Believers by religion.

In the autumn of 1848, the locality was the site of a daring escape of Wallachian revolutionaries kept in Ottoman custody. Maria Rosetti and Constantin Daniel Rosenthal called on the local mayor to demand that Ottoman guards hand in their weapons on what was at the time Austrian soil, and all persons arrested were consequently free to go.