Nebojša Tower: Belgrade Fortress’s Principal Defensive Tower
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Serbia
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Hungarian, Ottoman
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Tower
On this page10 sections
History
Nebojša Tower is a medieval defensive tower in Belgrade, Serbia, built by the Hungarians around 1460 to protect the Danube port and its approach from Ottoman attack. It stands in the Lower Town of Belgrade Fortress, near the confluence of the Sava and Danube, and is described as the fortress’s only surviving medieval tower. For centuries, it served as the principal defensive tower of the fortress.
The medieval fortress and the tower’s name
The name nebojša means “fearless” and was traditionally applied to the tower projecting farthest from a fortress. It does not refer to a person, although the building is sometimes incorrectly called “Nebojša’s Tower.” The present tower was formerly known as the White Tower and later as the Timișoara Tower. Its current name was transferred from an earlier Nebojša Tower in the fortress’s Little Town after that structure was destroyed in 1690.
Tradition connects the original tower with the keep built during the rule of Despot Stefan Lazarević. A despot was a high-ranking title used by medieval Byzantine and Balkan rulers. Stefan Lazarević controlled Belgrade from 1403 and made it the capital of Serbia. The earlier keep probably resembled the Despot’s Tower at Manasija Monastery. It was destroyed during the 1690 siege of Belgrade, when an explosion in the fortress’s main powder magazine devastated much of the Little Town.
Before the present tower was built, the area west and southwest of it, between the fortress and the Sava, contained Water Town. Established by Despot Stefan Lazarević above the Lower Town port, this settlement included an open market, a watermill, and a fish market. Trade there involved fish, grain, fruit, vegetables, wool, hides, furs, and wax.
Ottoman attacks and Austrian rebuilding
The tower formed part of the defensive system strengthened after the Ottoman siege of Belgrade in 1456. During the Ottoman siege of 1521, its artillery delayed the attackers until the tower was set on fire. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent ordered its reconstruction. Its military importance meant that it was repeatedly damaged or destroyed and rebuilt over later centuries.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, Austria reconstructed Belgrade Fortress as part of a wider transformation into a fortified Baroque city. The tower was rebuilt during this work, and its earlier battlemented summit was replaced by the roof structure that survives today. Old firing openings were blocked and larger openings were made for heavier cannon. The inner war port protected by the tower still existed at that time.
After the Ottomans regained Belgrade in 1739, they filled in the port. This ended the tower’s principal military role and led to its conversion into a dungeon. An arsenal had been built at its base around 1725. During the First Serbian Uprising, the revolt against Ottoman rule from 1804 to 1813, Serbian rebels led by Karađorđe used the arsenal for casting cannon between 1807 and 1813.
The prison and wartime history
As an Ottoman prison, Nebojša Tower became associated with severe conditions and with reports that prisoners were strangled and their bodies thrown through openings into the river. Rigas Feraios, an eighteenth-century Greek revolutionary and poet associated with the movement for Greek independence, was executed there in 1798. Metropolitan Methodius of Belgrade was killed there around 1800. Jevrem Obrenović, the brother of Prince Miloš Obrenović, is identified as the only person said to have emerged alive from the tower.
The tower sector again became a landing and combat zone during the Austro-Hungarian bombardment and invasion of Belgrade in October 1914. Fourteen Austro-Hungarian companies and six Serbian companies fought there. The attackers initially suffered heavy losses at the tower’s base, but later captured the embankment and the railway south of it.
The tower also entered Serbian cultural memory through historical and epic song. In the early twentieth century, Serbs from Banija sang about Nebojša Tower to the accompaniment of the gusle. The field in front of the tower hosted the first football match in Serbia on 19 May 1896. Hugo Buli had introduced a leather football to Serbia and explained the rules to the players.
Twentieth-century damage and conservation
The former arsenal was buried and effectively divided when the modern Donjogradski Boulevard, now Vojvoda Bojović Boulevard, was built over it in 1935. During the Second World War, bodies carried downstream from the Ustaše Jasenovac concentration camp were recovered by fishermen and buried around the tower and near the Charles VI Gate. The graves are unmarked. Approximately 5,000 bodies were recovered from the Sava between 1941 and 1945, most of them being buried elsewhere in Belgrade.
A defensive bunker was constructed near the tower in 1948 and 1949 after the Tito-Stalin split. Work on it revealed a five-metre-thick rampart belonging to the original Nebojša Tower, but the remains were demolished so that construction could be completed. The Belgrade Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments began urgent technical-protection work soon after its establishment because the tower was threatened with complete collapse. Under investigations directed by architect Gita Mađarević, the lower tower and foundations were reinforced with concrete, prestressed-concrete rings were installed in higher zones, the facades and openings were conserved and restored, and the internal wooden floors were reinstated.
The tower was reconstructed in 1963. A later revitalization project began in June 2009 and was completed in 2010. The building was adapted as a museum, with exhibitions arranged across its levels. The first floor is dedicated to Rigas Feraios. Excavations connected with the museum project uncovered and conserved remains of the Austrian arsenal built in 1725. The museum presents the tower’s history, its prison period, Rigas Feraios, the First Serbian Uprising, and Belgrade’s development after liberation from Ottoman rule through interactive multimedia exhibitions in Serbian, Greek, and English.
Remains
The medieval artillery tower
Nebojša Tower has a regular octagonal plan, walls approximately 2.8 metres thick, and a total height of about 20 metres. It consists of a ground level and several upper storeys. Cannon openings were arranged on every side of the upper levels, allowing artillery to fire toward attackers approaching from the river or the land. The arrangement places the building within the early type of multistorey artillery cannon tower.
The original summit was level, with battlements and projecting wooden corbels. A corbel is a projecting architectural support. In this case, the supports carried a wooden fighting platform from which defenders could attack assailants. The Austrian reconstruction replaced this battlemented top with a roof structure that remains in place. The alterations to the firing openings also survive as part of the tower’s later form, with the older embrasures, or openings in a fortified wall for firing weapons, blocked and larger cannon openings introduced.
The museum complex and exhibitions
The former waterfront rampart has been incorporated into a museum annex and serves as its lobby. An extension toward former Watergate No. 2 contains a meeting hall with 500 seats. The 2009 to 2010 adaptation restored or conserved nearly 2,500 square metres of walls, including facades, and revitalized approximately 3,000 cubic metres of ramparts. The work used about 100,000 handmade bricks, 1,050 cubic metres of concrete, 150 tonnes of steel and iron, and 135 square metres of glass. Glass was used to convert cannon openings into windows.
The museum’s exhibitions are multimedia and interactive. The ground-floor installation presents the prison period and slavery and includes 150 suspended portraits of political prisoners. The first floor focuses on Rigas Feraios, the second on the First Serbian Uprising, and the upper exhibition level on Belgrade after liberation from Ottoman rule. The restored interior wooden floor structure allows these historical themes to be distributed through the tower’s several levels.
The nearby defensive bunker
The defensive bunker constructed near the tower in 1948 and 1949 covered approximately 200 square metres. Its highest feature is a cannon dome formerly used by artillery and military units. After the bunker was abandoned, it was adapted for visitors and opened in December 2012 with surviving equipment from the 1950s, including safety doors, beds, ventilation equipment, and water tanks.
Arsenal remains
Excavations around the present tower uncovered remains of the Austrian arsenal built around 1725. These remains were conserved during the museum project and preserve a physical link to the period when the fortress was being reshaped under Austrian rule. The former arsenal had also been used by Karađorđe’s forces for casting cannon during the First Serbian Uprising.
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