Virtual Exhibition / The Gatherings at the Church of St. Panteleimon
Thursday-Thursday / AUGUST 24 – SEPTEMBER 7, 2023 / Cultural Center of Nish / Officers’ Club
Every neighborhood in Nish was like a small town, at least in the memory of the writer Dejan Stojiljkovic, who spent his childhood in Pantelei. One of the most popular cafés of those days was “The Joker”, and people came from all over the city to hang out in it. The writer remembers how on Friday and Saturday evenings numerous cars could be found parked outside, and inside, city girls and young bucks would gather in the Joker and create a stifling crowd. Not far away from it, the author himself lived on Borska Street, and that area towards Vinik was brimming with other taverns and the popular pinball parlors of the time. If we take the Nishlian writer’s word for it, Velja’s pinball parlor, which was located in the courtyard of the Church of St. Panteleimon, was a particularly popular place.
In the 1980s, the youth of Nish would gather in that very church courtyard, which was the first one built after the liberation from the Ottoman Turks. Just 100m above the 19th-century church, the remains of an old church built by Stefan Nemanja seven centuries earlier can be found. That’s the place where the Grand Prince Nemanja welcomed Friedrich Barbarossa in 1189, who at the time was leading an army on the Third Crusade down the road to Constantinople. In addition to the medieval church, archaeological excavations carried out between 1966 and 1969, revealed the existence of an ancient church from the fourth or fifth century at that location, as well as a medieval necropolis from the twelfth century with 150 graves. Even if Velja’s pinball parlor from Stojiljkovic’s youth had never opened, Pantelei would not lack people. The people of Nish had been gathering in the courtyard of the church on the feast day of St. Panteleimon, August 9th, since those long-forgotten days of yore, and they continue to do so year after year.
