Virtual Exhibition / The Southern Part of King Milan’s Square
Thursday-Thursday / AUGUST 24 – SEPTEMBER 7, 2023 / Cultural Center of Nish / Officers’ Club
The Roman road: Via Militaris, had been flowing down from the North and through the core of a provincial town long before it belonged to the Turkish Empire. Along this road, sparks of the uprising’s future emancipatory dreams spread-those dreams that would snatch Serbia from within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire. Long before the liberation of the Serbian state, before the fall of Constantinople, even before the birth of the great Emperor Constantine, in the provincial Roman town, roads branching towards the Danube, Constantinople, Thessaloniki, and Skadar formed a crossroads. Right in the epicentre of these Balkan routes, a square was formed in the ancient, perhaps even pre-ancient period. We can find the first written testament related to this area in the notes of Albert of Aachen. The chronicler speaks of the Crusaders of Peter the Hermit passing through Nish in 1096. Later, during the 15th and 16th centuries, an oriental town began to grow around and above the ancient road. Two mills and the hamam of Mehmed Bey were built, followed by the first shops and residential buildings, as well as the Caravanserai. The Caravanserai would later give place to a horse market and then the Bit-bazaar, and eventually a fairground. Soon thereafter Hizir Bey’s mosque was built… Around the mosque, from whose ruins a monument to the city’s liberators would emerge, a thoroughfare on the left bank of the Nishava began to form.
But the spirit of Via Militaris had to make itself known once more. Once kindled, the flames of Balkan freedom were carried along the forgotten Byzantine road, from Vrachar, through Deligrad, to Chegar above Nish, and beyond. Nish became an important part of the newly liberated and autonomous Serbian Principality.
“In dignified work, and in joyful revelry”, the post-Ottoman people Nish greeted the new times with enthusiasm. The oriental facades of Turkish Nish, old Serbian houses with bay windows, storefronts with shutters, and narrow alleyways would be replaced by new buildings and wide streets. The remnants of the Turkish days disappeared one by one after the liberation in 1878. The space of the central square, where once lay that fateful Roman road, was the first to be affected. Hizir Bey’s mosque (also known as Pasha Mosque) was demolished, the Turkish graves were removed, and the shops were relocated by 1879. The mysterious disappearance of the Turkish cemetery was accompanied by a dreadful fire that consumed a significant portion of the Jewish quarter on the left bank of the Nishava. The synagogue, the rabbi’s house, the Jewish House, and numerous shops and private houses were all consumed by the flames, right up to the river itself.
