Gruža (region)



The Gruža (Гружа, ) is a geographical region in central Serbia. The region, containing a village of the same name, due to its location is poetically referred to as the Heart of Šumadija.

Geography
The region is located in the valley of the Gruža river, with developed agriculture and numerous settlements. The watershed itself covers 622 km2, but the region covers 764.5 km2 as it includes the valley of the Velika Reka. The Gruža is a micro-region and makes the southern part of the Šumadija region of central Serbia (also called High Šumadija). It stretches in the northwest-southeast direction, and is bounded by the West Pomoravlje to the south, the Gledić Mountains and the Levač region to the east, Rudnik and Ješevac mopuntains, and Takovo and Lepenica regions to the north, and the Kotlenik mountain to the west. The central part of the region is the Gruža Depression. Due to its geographical location, in the center of Serbia, it is nicknamed the Heart of Serbia or the Heart of Šumadija.

The region consists of two sub-regions, Upper Gruža (with 363.5 km2) and Lower Gruža (401 km2). They are divided by the narrowing known as Tucački Naper. The location was dammed and the artificial Gruža Lake was formed. The reservoir contains 65,000,000 m3 of water and covers an area of 9.34 km2, thus permanently flooding a part of the Knić Field. The water is used for the waterworks of Kragujevac.

Other rivers in the region, tributaries to the Gruža river, are mostly short: Kamenička Reka (13 km), Boračka Reka (16 km), and Ribež (19 km). The southern section of the region, in direction of West Morava, is a composite valley, cut between the mountains of Kotlenik and Gledičke. This section is called the Guberevac Trench.

Characteristics
The region is very fertile and thus almost exclusively an agricultural area. Even though populated by many villages (58 or 61 settlements), they all have small population and are increasingly depopulating, despite the land's fertility. In the Knić section, population fell from 28,380 in 1948 (69 inhabitants per km2) to 11,729 in 2022 (28 inhabitants per km2), as previously well developed industries in the nearby towns of Gornji Milanovac, Kraljevo and Kragujevac constantly attracted the manpower from the Gruža region (for example, the density of population in the neighboring Lepenica region, where the city of Kragujevac is located, peaked at 215 inhabitants per km2 in 2011.

The settlements are mostly dispersed, and the center of the region is the municipal seat of Knić, located 4 km west from the Gruža river. The Gruža river valley in the center of the region is the route for the regional Kragujevac-Kraljevo road and railway, which, with the additional road connection to Gornji Milanovac, makes the region generally well connected to the other parts of Serbia.

Culture
Lepe li su nano Gružanke devojke (Oh, mom, girls from Gruža are beautiful) is a popular folk song, written by Dragiša Nedović.