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Church of Saint Sava
The Church of Saint Sava (Serbian: Храм Светог Саве, romanized: Hram Svetog Save, lit. ''The Temple of Saint Sava'') is a Serbian Orthodox church in Belgrade, capital of Serbia. It is the fourth largest Eastern Orthodox church in the world and one of the largest churches in the world by gross volume.
The church is dedicated to Saint Sava, the first Serbian archbishop and the nation's patron saint. It was symbolically built on the site where his relics are believed to have been burned on a pyre by the Ottomans in 1594 following a Serb uprising. Construction of the church began in 1935 and was completed only in 2004, when the exterior was finished, and in 2020, when work on the interior was completed, following decades of interrupted construction, wars, and political turmoil.
Inspired by the Hagia Sophia, the Church of Saint Sava is one of Belgrade’s most recognizable landmarks[according to whom?] and a major tourist attraction.
Saint Sava (1175–1235), the patron saint of Serbia and the Serbs, was born as Rastko, a Serbian prince and the son of Stefan Nemanja (r. 1166–1196). Rastko took monastic vows under the name Sava and was later joined by his father, who became the monk Simeon, at Mount Athos, an important center of Eastern Orthodox monasticism, where the Byzantine emperor granted them Hilandar. Sava returned to Serbia after Simeon's death and organized the Serbian Church, and was later consecrated as the first Serbian Archbishop. Sava died in 1236 and was later canonized.
In 1594, Serbs rose up against Ottoman rule in Banat, during the Long Turkish War which was fought at the Austrian-Ottoman border in the Balkans. The Serbian patriarchate and rebels had established relations with foreign states, and had captured several towns, although the uprising was quickly suppressed. The rebels had, in the character of a holy war, carried war flags with the icon of Saint Sava. Ottoman Grand vizier Sinan Pasha ordered that the sarcophagus and relics of Saint Sava at the Mileševa Monastery be brought by military convoy to Belgrade. As a form of retaliation against the rebels, the Ottomans publicly burned the relics on a pyre on 27 April 1595. Although the exact location of this event is disputed it is thought to be on the Vračar plateau.
On the 300th anniversary of the burning of Saint Sava's relics in 1894, an initiative was launched to build a church dedicated to Saint Sava, leading to the establishment of the Society for the Construction of the Church of Saint Sava on Vračar the following year. The search for a site provoked debate as the exact location of the burning remained disputed. Presumed locations included Crveni Krst, suggested by Gligorije Vozarović who erected Vozarev Cross at the spot; Tašmajdan, which is the prevailing view in modern historiography; and the Vračar plateau, which enjoyed the widest public support at the time and was ultimately selected as the site. Most of the land donated for the construction was provided by Francis Mackenzie, a Scottish missionary credited with acquiring and developing this area of the city. By the 1900 decree of King Alexander I, the planned church was declared a "national edifice". Initially a small church was constructed and the search began to find an adequate design.
In 1906, an architectural design competition for the future church was announced. Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, authorized to select the winning design, rejected all five applications as insufficient. Meanwhile, there was a public debate over the project, with Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović proposing the building of a Yugoslavist "Vidovdan Temple" at Gazimestan in 1905 instead, a scale model which was exhibited at Serbia's pavilion at the 1911 International Exhibition of Art and the full-scale model exhibited in London in 1915. The Balkan Wars and World War I stopped all construction activities. After the war, in 1919, the Society for the Construction of the Church of Saint Sava on Vračar was re-established and the idea for the memorial church transformed into a more ambitious project.
Another architectural design competition was announced in 1926 with the design guidelines stating that the church should be the "greatest and most monumental building in the country, and have ultimate artistic importance". Beside the church itself, the project was to include buildings for the Patriarchate, Eastern Orthodox Seminary, and the Ministry of Religion. The church design was to be in the style of the Serbo-Byzantine architecture of the 14th century. The Patriarch Dimitrije, on the other hand, envisioned a church built in the late Byzantine "Morava style", with an area of 3,000 sq m, a tower of 80 m, offering space to 6,000 faithful. Dimitrije favoured Serbian and Russian graduates of the Vienna Academy of Arts which figured prominently in the 1926–27 competition. The 1926–27 competition saw entries from major architects in the country; besides Bogdan Nestorović and Aleksandar Deroko, entries came from Dragiša Brašovan, Milan Zloković, Milutin Borisavljević, Branko Krstić, Petar Krstić, Žarko Tatić, Aleksej Papkov, Miladin Prljević, among others. The architectural design selection committee included Patriarch Dimitrije, Jovan Cvijić, Andra Stevanović, Bogdan Popović, Pera Popović, and Momir Korunović. The committee declined to select a winner, criticizing quality of the entries as none of them met the tender criteria. Most proposed designs were based on models of the Gračanica Monastery as the main representative of Serbian medieval architecture. It is believed that the Jury had recommended the two models.
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Church of Saint Sava
The Church of Saint Sava (Serbian: Храм Светог Саве, romanized: Hram Svetog Save, lit. ''The Temple of Saint Sava'') is a Serbian Orthodox church in Belgrade, capital of Serbia. It is the fourth largest Eastern Orthodox church in the world and one of the largest churches in the world by gross volume.
The church is dedicated to Saint Sava, the first Serbian archbishop and the nation's patron saint. It was symbolically built on the site where his relics are believed to have been burned on a pyre by the Ottomans in 1594 following a Serb uprising. Construction of the church began in 1935 and was completed only in 2004, when the exterior was finished, and in 2020, when work on the interior was completed, following decades of interrupted construction, wars, and political turmoil.
Inspired by the Hagia Sophia, the Church of Saint Sava is one of Belgrade’s most recognizable landmarks[according to whom?] and a major tourist attraction.
Saint Sava (1175–1235), the patron saint of Serbia and the Serbs, was born as Rastko, a Serbian prince and the son of Stefan Nemanja (r. 1166–1196). Rastko took monastic vows under the name Sava and was later joined by his father, who became the monk Simeon, at Mount Athos, an important center of Eastern Orthodox monasticism, where the Byzantine emperor granted them Hilandar. Sava returned to Serbia after Simeon's death and organized the Serbian Church, and was later consecrated as the first Serbian Archbishop. Sava died in 1236 and was later canonized.
In 1594, Serbs rose up against Ottoman rule in Banat, during the Long Turkish War which was fought at the Austrian-Ottoman border in the Balkans. The Serbian patriarchate and rebels had established relations with foreign states, and had captured several towns, although the uprising was quickly suppressed. The rebels had, in the character of a holy war, carried war flags with the icon of Saint Sava. Ottoman Grand vizier Sinan Pasha ordered that the sarcophagus and relics of Saint Sava at the Mileševa Monastery be brought by military convoy to Belgrade. As a form of retaliation against the rebels, the Ottomans publicly burned the relics on a pyre on 27 April 1595. Although the exact location of this event is disputed it is thought to be on the Vračar plateau.
On the 300th anniversary of the burning of Saint Sava's relics in 1894, an initiative was launched to build a church dedicated to Saint Sava, leading to the establishment of the Society for the Construction of the Church of Saint Sava on Vračar the following year. The search for a site provoked debate as the exact location of the burning remained disputed. Presumed locations included Crveni Krst, suggested by Gligorije Vozarović who erected Vozarev Cross at the spot; Tašmajdan, which is the prevailing view in modern historiography; and the Vračar plateau, which enjoyed the widest public support at the time and was ultimately selected as the site. Most of the land donated for the construction was provided by Francis Mackenzie, a Scottish missionary credited with acquiring and developing this area of the city. By the 1900 decree of King Alexander I, the planned church was declared a "national edifice". Initially a small church was constructed and the search began to find an adequate design.
In 1906, an architectural design competition for the future church was announced. Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences, authorized to select the winning design, rejected all five applications as insufficient. Meanwhile, there was a public debate over the project, with Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović proposing the building of a Yugoslavist "Vidovdan Temple" at Gazimestan in 1905 instead, a scale model which was exhibited at Serbia's pavilion at the 1911 International Exhibition of Art and the full-scale model exhibited in London in 1915. The Balkan Wars and World War I stopped all construction activities. After the war, in 1919, the Society for the Construction of the Church of Saint Sava on Vračar was re-established and the idea for the memorial church transformed into a more ambitious project.
Another architectural design competition was announced in 1926 with the design guidelines stating that the church should be the "greatest and most monumental building in the country, and have ultimate artistic importance". Beside the church itself, the project was to include buildings for the Patriarchate, Eastern Orthodox Seminary, and the Ministry of Religion. The church design was to be in the style of the Serbo-Byzantine architecture of the 14th century. The Patriarch Dimitrije, on the other hand, envisioned a church built in the late Byzantine "Morava style", with an area of 3,000 sq m, a tower of 80 m, offering space to 6,000 faithful. Dimitrije favoured Serbian and Russian graduates of the Vienna Academy of Arts which figured prominently in the 1926–27 competition. The 1926–27 competition saw entries from major architects in the country; besides Bogdan Nestorović and Aleksandar Deroko, entries came from Dragiša Brašovan, Milan Zloković, Milutin Borisavljević, Branko Krstić, Petar Krstić, Žarko Tatić, Aleksej Papkov, Miladin Prljević, among others. The architectural design selection committee included Patriarch Dimitrije, Jovan Cvijić, Andra Stevanović, Bogdan Popović, Pera Popović, and Momir Korunović. The committee declined to select a winner, criticizing quality of the entries as none of them met the tender criteria. Most proposed designs were based on models of the Gračanica Monastery as the main representative of Serbian medieval architecture. It is believed that the Jury had recommended the two models.
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