Church of Saint Sava

The site is charged with history: on this plateau in 1595 the Ottoman pasha burned the relics of Saint Sava, brought from the Mileševa monastery — an act meant to break Serbian spirit that made the saint its national symbol instead. The idea of a great votive church arose in 1895, 300 years after the burning; the land was largely donated by the Scottish missionary and developer Francis Mackenzie. Construction began on 10 May 1935 — 340 years after the burning — to designs of Bogdan Nestorović and Aleksandar Deroko, inspired by Hagia Sophia. Work stopped in 1941 with the walls at 7–11 metres; the Wehrmacht and then the Red Army parked vehicles in the unfinished shell. Patriarch German revived the project in 1958; after decades of communist refusal, 100,000 believers at a 1985 liturgy forced the state’s hand. The 4,000-tonne central dome — cast on the ground — was lifted into place on 26 June 1989 in 20 days of hydraulic lifting, two days before the 600th anniversary of Kosovo; the exterior was finished in 2004, and between 2017 and 2020 Russian and Serbian mosaicists covered 15,000 m² of interior with gold-ground mosaic — the largest mosaic ensemble in the world, completed February 2020.