I went back to Belgrade after approximately 3 years. Of course, I went to see the church. Well, let me tell you straight away. No photos or videos will ever convey the magnificence of this religious temple. You simply have to go there, to see it for yourself in its entirety. They say that the Saint Sava church is new Hagia Sofia. It could be, especially as Hagia Sofia is yet again a functioning mosque.
Anyway, the Orthodox world now has one more church that it can be proud of. But I think it’s more than that. Th church is a magnificent addition to the legacy of all Christian world.
HISTORY OF SAINT SAVA CHURCH
The church is dedicated to Saint Sava, the founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church, an important figure in medieval Serbia. The Ottoman Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha burned his remains in 1595, in the location where the church stands now.
In 1895, 300 years after the burning of Saint Sava’s remains, they founded the Society for the Construction of the Church of Saint Sava. The Ottomans no longer ruled Serbia.
In 1905, they launched a public contest to design the church, but they rejected all 5 received applications. After the breakout of the First and Second Balkan Wars and the First World War, they stopped all activities on the construction of the church.
In 1919, after the First World War, the Society was re-established. They held a new public contest in 1926 and selected the second-place submission by the architect Aleksandar Deroko. Finally, 40 years after the initial idea, they started construction of the church on the 10th May 1935, namely 340 years after the burning of Saint Sava’s remains.
But the works stopped altogether after the April 1941 bombing of Belgrade. By that time, they completed the foundation. They managed to erect the walls to the height of 7 and 11 meters.
The occupying German army used the compound as the Wehrmacht’s parking lot. Both, the Red and Yugoslav People’s Army used it for the same purpose in 1944. After the Second World War, various companies used it as a storage space.
CHURCH REVIVAL
Nevertheless, the Serbian Patriarch German renewed the idea of building the church in 1958. The church made 88 requests to the communist government, of which they sent 82 directly to Tito, but he never replied.
The permission for continuation of the building works finally arrived in 1984. The works started in August 1985.
Undoubtedly, the greatest achievement of the construction process was the lifting of the 4000 ton dome. The lifting took 40 days and it was completed in June 1989. I regularly passed by the building site on the way to the university at that time and remember seeing the dome a bit higher every day.
After the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, they again stopped the works. The Patriarch considered such expensive works inappropriate at the time of the great Serbian suffering. However, the works continued in 2001 and they completed the exterior of the church in 2017.
The Russian Academy of Arts completed the magnificent mosaic in 2021. As I said earlier, you really have to visit the church, to see it with your own eyes. At the same time, make sure that you visit the crypt below the church.
I took some photos of the church interior for this post, as an illustration. They can give you an idea of how the church looks inside, regardless, you will be taken aback when you enter this marvellous religious temple.
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