Guided by: Dijana Milašinović Marić
Sunday, 04.05.2024, from 10.00 to 12.00
→ Kapetan Mišino zdanje, Studentski trg
The architectural connections between Belgrade and Prague, which began in the middle of the 19th century when Serbia began to open up towards European cultural space, were especially strengthened after the First World War and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the formation of national Slavic states. There was a strong cultural cooperation between two close Slavic nations, which resulted in educational cooperation as well as the education of our architects at the Czech Technical University (ČVUT). In that time, the Yugoslav Czechoslovak League and the Sokol movement were founded, and the Czech architects, engineers and the famous architectural bureau “Matija Bleha” were constructing a series of buildings in Belgrade, imprinting a special layer of elegant representative palaces on the city map.
The palaces that are included in the “Architectural Connections Belgrade – Prague” walk, to some extent reflect all of the above-mentioned aspects, as well as the architectural styles of the era. The first in the series is the representative palace of the Danube captain Miša Anastasijević, built in 1863, followed by a series of extraordinary and unique city buildings: the palaces of the Yugoslav (1923), Prague and Serbian-American (1928-31) banks, which at the same time reflect the strong development of the state in every sense. Then, as part of a review of Serbian builders who studied in Prague, the focus will be on the architect behind the representative building of the Ministry of Post (1927-30), a unique and individual example of an expressive architectural style with skilfully transformed elements of national architecture and a recognizable influence of Rondocubism. The last in a series of representative palaces is the current Embassy of the Czech Republic (1928), located at the beginning of one of the city’s main arteries, King Alexander Boulevard.
