The story of Church of Saint Sava

This is the fourth largest Eastern Orthodox church in the world, and it took almost a century to build. It is dedicated to Saint Sava, born Rastko, a Serbian prince who became a monk on Mount Athos and later the first Serbian archbishop. In 1595, after a Serb uprising whose rebels carried flags with his icon, the Ottoman grand vizier Sinan Pasha had his relics brought from Mileševa Monastery and publicly burned.

On the 300th anniversary, the idea of a church was born, and the Vračar plateau, believed to be the place of the burning, was chosen. Design competitions failed, wars intervened, and only on 10 May 1935 did construction begin, to plans by Aleksandar Deroko and Bogdan Nestorović inspired by Hagia Sophia, whose dome they meant to exceed. By 1941 the walls were 7 to 11 metres high.

The German army then used the unfinished church as a car park, and its granite was taken for another monument. The exterior was finished only in 2004, the interior in 2020.