Kikinda (Serbian Cyrillic: Кикинда, ) is a town and a municipality located in Serbia, in the autonomous province of Vojvodina. It is the administrative centre of the North Banat District. The town has 37,676 inhabitants, while the municipality has 59,329 inhabitants.
The modern city was founded in 18th century. From 1774 to 1874 Kikinda was the seat of the District of Velika Kikinda, the autonomous administrative unit of Habsburg Monarchy. In 1893 Kikinda was granted the status of a town. The town became part of the Kingdom of Serbia (and Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) in 1918. Kikinda used to be a very strong economic and industrial centre of Serbia and Yugoslavia up until the 1990s. Currently, the industry of Kikinda is in the middle of the transitional economic process.
In 1996, the well preserved archeological remnants of a half a million-year-old mammoth were excavated on the outer edge of the town area. The mammoth called "Kika" has become one of the symbols of the town. Today it is exhibited in the National Museum of Kikinda. Other attractions of the city are the Suvača – a unique horse-powered dry mill, the annual Pumpkin days and the International Symposium of Sculpture "Terra".
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