Monument to the Unknown Hero

ABOUT THIS ATTRACTION

On Avala’s plateau stands one of Europe’s great war memorials: eight stone caryatids — women of eight historical regions, in folk costume — carrying a granite sarcophagus holding the remains of a soldier of WWI whose name nobody could recover. Meštrović carved the figures from Jablanica granite in his studio and assembled them in a colonnade that reads as both classical temple and Serbian funeral stele. The monument’s build cost the mountain its medieval fortress: Žrnov, the Turkish-era watching post above Belgrade, was demolished in 1934 to clear the summit. In the Kingdom’s symbolism the eight caryatids were the eight provinces — a monument to one unknown soldier that is really a monument to a whole country assembled from its regions.