It is believed that settlement got its name from the large rock in the vicinity, called Ripa. Slopes of the Avala were already inhabioted in Neolithic. The location is an old mining area as it is known that already Romans were extracting mercury and silver and the tradition was later continued by the medieval Saxon miners. One of the major Serbian industrialists in the early 20th century, Đorđe Vajfert, also owned several mining fields. The mercury extraction from the Avala mountain ended in the second half of the 20th century.