BELGRADE (26 page)

Built in 1955 as an artificial amphitheatre, it provided a backcloth for public performances organized by the party. The square offered a bare stage, with no trees or fountains as now, but with a clear view of the structure’s massive curved lines on which huge pictures of President Tito and other dignitaries were hung for the May Day parade. This celebration of workers would pass down the boulevard, in front of the National Assembly where leaders of the party and government waited, continue round Marx and Engels Square and then enter Terazije. Today the square is broken up by the natural outlines of trees, water cascading from fountains and the buzz of the constant human traffic crossing from one side to the other.

This impressively broad and long thoroughfare provides one of the main exits from the centre toward the periphery of Belgrade, leading eventually to Smederevo. It also used to be the beginning of the main route connecting Kalemegdan with the sultan’s court at Istanbul. Its various names down the ages reveal layers of the city’s history. It has been called Smederevo Highway (Smederevski drum), Constantinople Highway (Carigradski drum), and in 1895 it was renamed King Alexander Obrenović Boulevard (Bulevar kralja Aleksandra Obrenovića). In 1946 the communists christened it Red Army Boulevard (Bulevar Crvene armije) in recognition of Soviet help in liberating Belgrade.

The Yugoslav Partisans joined forces with the Red Army in 1944 for the final push against the Germans in the capital city. The main force entered Belgrade down this street, fighting along its whole length, from house to house, against very fierce resistance from an adversary with little left to lose. The Partisans, more used to operating in open country than in the confines of a major city, lost many soldiers in this action.

One of the consequences of the change in ideological direction after 1948 was to change the names of some streets in the city that honoured Yugoslavia’s previous co-operation with the USSR. From 1952 the road was called Revolution Boulevard (Bulevar revolucije), eclipsing the debt owed to the former ally. This name survived to 1997 when the advent of a different ideological climate prompted a new change to King Alexander Boulevard.

The authorities responsible for the Serbian quarter around the Town Gate in the early days were terrified by the danger of fire. A small spark could easily spread through the tightly packed houses and cause great damage. Smoking on the streets was already banned by public edict, and it was decided to follow this precaution with another. Merchants who traded in gunpowder and firearms were required to leave the old town and relocate their shops in 1845 to the Constantinople Highway above the Batal-džamija. The area became known as Fišekdžijska čaršija, from the Turkish word
fišekdžija
used in Serbian for someone who trades in gunpowder and cartridges. Although this was the main route out of Belgrade for Istanbul, the road that wound its way up from the Town Gate district resembled a wide cart track. In 1859 the stretch of road from the mosque to the end of the Fišekdžijska čaršija was cobbled, but afterward the track narrowed back to its former dimensions and made its way through thick undergrowth and reeds growing on the marshy ground. The gunpowder merchants were joined by the rag-and–bone men whose trade was considered too unhygienic for the markets in town, and by the end of the nineteenth century only about forty per cent of the shops here traded in weapons. The area became a flea market with a poor reputation among the more respected members of the community. By 1892 three tram lines converged into the street and ran as far as the tramway stables, as they were locally called. The term was apt as the early trams were drawn by horses that required stabling. There is still a depot for electric trams on the same spot.

Belgrade developed along this route from the Batal-džamija, past Tašmajdan, to the tram depot. By the beginning of the twentieth century this represented the city limits in this direction. The first track for horse racing, the Trkalište, was established here on the open spaces at the edge of the city until it was moved in 1906 to its present position at Senjak. The intensive building of more accommodation along this street dictated the founding of another market for residents and in the 1920s the Đeram Market was opened a little further down the road from the tram depot. The King Alexander Obrenović Boulevard had a splendid appearance, far removed from its origins, now with wide pavements, a properly surfaced road and shops and kafanas along its length from Terazije to the market and beyond.

The major period of architectural development took place in the period between the two world wars with the construction of the National Assembly, post office, and across the road the Czechoslovak Embassy, the building in which the capitulation of the country was signed in 1941. The University of Belgrade expanded along the boulevard during these same decades with the university library (1921–26), a hall of residence commissioned by King Alexander for 500 students (1928), a Technical Faculty (1926–31) and a Law Faculty (1935–38). The statue of Vuk Karadžić was placed at the corner of the park where the student hall stands in 1937, a reminder of the cultural contribution made by one of Serbia’s foremost language reformers. Not far from the university complex is a museum dedicated to the famous scientist Nikola Tesla at 51 Crown Street. Tesla (1856–1943) moved to New York and made many important discoveries in the fields of electrical engineering and radio technology.

This was the golden age of Belgrade’s emergence as an urban centre. Outward modernization was symbolized by the completion of large residential and commercial premises, the introduction of a proper transport system and the supply of electricity, water, sanitation, and all the other attributes of contemporary city life. The handsome proportions of the boulevard contributed toward the self-affirmation of Belgrade society and its place in the modern world.

Stone was quarried from the district around today’s neat park of Tašmajdan, providing after many years a system of underground caves and corridors. Units of Karađorđe’s cavalry hid in these caves, waiting for passing Turks during the First Serbian Uprising. They were used as a shelter and makeshift hospital during the city’s bombardment in the First World War. Later, they housed the German army’s communications centre in the Second World War, with plans for the network of tunnels to be strengthened and transformed into the military command post for the whole of south-eastern Europe. The raised plateau where the St. Mark’s Church now stands was an ideal position for artillery batteries besieging Belgrade, as proven in the successful Austrian attack of 1717 and again by the Serbian rebels in 1806.

The most significant political event associated with Tašmajdan took place in 1830 with the reading of the
hatti-sherif
granting the Serbs greater autonomy and rights on this spot. The decree was read out to Knez Miloš and then handed over in a formal ceremony for which a large tent was erected; the tent had two entrances, one for the Ottoman officials and a separate one for the Serbian officials to allow them to meet in the middle.

The ground is now more associated with the large church dedicated to St. Mark, which towers above the park. In 1826 the Orthodox Church wanted to move the main Christian cemetery from the Town Gate as the district was planned for expansion as a residential area. Tašmajdan was an obvious choice as it already possessed a small graveyard used by the people down the hill in Palilula. Many more people now made their way along the old road to Istanbul from Belgrade but for an entirely different purpose. Funeral processions coming slowly up the hill and passing in front of the arms-dealers on their way to the Tašmajdan cemetery became a common sight. A small church dedicated to St. Mark was opened in 1835. However, by the 1870s the Church hierarchy was beginning to reconsider the best use of its property on the bluff overlooking the town and expressed a desire to move the cemetery once more for two reasons: it was no longer adequate for the needs of the community and could not be made bigger as it was hemmed in by the old quarry workings on one side and by the road on the other. It was also felt that more profitable gain could be made by increasing the space available to rent to the growing number of new businesses opening here. The decision to forbid further burials was taken in 1883, but it was not until the 1920s that the graveyard was dug up and moved. The small shops and the original Fišekdžijska čaršija have long since been demolished in later developments.

Further changes and additions were made in the twentieth century, firstly with the foundation of the Seismological Institute in 1909, and then with the erection of the small Russian Orthodox Church dedicated to the Holy Trinity in 1924. The largest architectural project was the construction of the new St. Mark’s Church, between 1932 and 1939, to replace the smaller one from the previous century. The church is modelled on that from the old monastery at Gračanica, near Priština in Kosovo. It is much larger than the original and built in a more grandiose, if not to say theatrical, style. It caused a controversy at the time as many people felt that it was not appropriate to update and modernize a historical monument with such strong associations for Serbian national feelings. Others felt that the solution was an excellent marriage of traditional architecture with the possibilities of twentieth-century construction techniques. The interior decoration of the church was interrupted by the Second World War and never completed, although the body of Tsar Dušan was transferred here.

Tašmajdan Park was designed in 1952, and some 800 people had to be resettled in new apartments elsewhere in the city to make room for it, although they left behind nothing more than shacks without basic facilities. The area below the park, away from the main road, was given over to sports with skating in winter and tennis, basketball and volleyball in the summer months. In the 1960s these facilities were upgraded with a proper sports complex, including an Olympic outdoor swimming pool. At the beginning of the twenty-first century a project to install external lighting at St. Mark’s was approved, which in the evenings shows off the architectural details of the building to best effect.

Near Tašmajdan and across the road from the National Assembly is another park, Pionirski Park, named after the youth movement of socialist Yugoslavia, the Pioneers. All children over the age of seven were members and wore bright red scarves. It was a national organization for promoting patriotic pride but was also, for most of the time, a place to have fun, to go on excursions and mix with friends. The park has a number of statues and sculptures, and contains examples of a variety of trees. On the corner by the traffic lights where Knez Miloš Street begins is a striking monument, the Lookout Post of the High Command of the Serbian Army (Osmatračnica Vrhovne komande srpske vojske). Alexander Karađorđević, as head of the Serbian army, alongside Vojvoda Živojin Mišić and other members of the HQ, observed his forces break through enemy lines on September 15 1918 at the end of the First World War. It was moved here in 1928 to commemorate the jubilee celebrations in memory of the Thessalonica Front.

Takovo Street begins from the post office on the corner with the boulevard. The offices and studio of Belgrade Television are at 10 Takovo Street, although the complex of buildings brings it quite close to the back of St. Mark’s. The first experimental broadcast was made in the city in 1939, but regular transmission did not begin until 1958. The television company was closely associated with the Milošević regime during the whole of the 1990s and was therefore a target for NATO in 1999, and also for anti-government demonstrators in the protests against his government and their policies in 1996–97 and again in 2000 when he was toppled from power.

The first street on the left is Kosovo Street and at no. 47 is the building of the old telephone exchange, the first in Belgrade, the façade of which bears a strong resemblance to the Vuk Karadžić Foundation on King Milan Street. Its architect, Branko Tanazević, was responsible for the highly decorative interpretation of this neo-Byzantine style in both cases. The exchange was built in 1908 when Belgrade had a population of some 80,000, of whom 6,000 were subscribers to the new telephone system. The building was constructed quite deliberately to house the latest technology in an architectural wrapping that provided an eloquent statement of national tradition.

Kosovo Street leads down towards the city centre and eventually arrives at the House of Youth (Dom omladine) at 22 Macedonia Street. Built in the early 1960s, it contains versatile spaces for theatre groups, film projections, exhibitions, concerts, literary evenings and discussion groups, and also hosts the Belgrade Jazz Festival. Further along the same street at no. 29 is the building of the
Politika
newspaper, while on the corner at Hilandar Street is Radio Belgrade. The close proximity of these two institutions has been a source of constant custom for the kafanas here. Journalists and other media people mounted a campaign to protect their favourite watering holes from globalized over-modernization. A particular effort was made to save the Under the Linden Tree (Pod lipom) kafana across from the
Politika
building, although the garish sign of Pizza Hut above the entrance attests to its failure. The home of the Atelje 212 theatre is not far away, at 21 Sveta Gora Street. It has been here since 1963 with its emphasis on promoting modern productions. The original theatre was in a building on Nikola Pašić Square, which contained exactly 212 seats.