| Between Takovska, Ilije Garašanina, Beogradska streets and Bulevar Kralja Aleksandra, there used to be a large stone-pit. That is how this park has got his name Tašmajdan (in Turkish: taš - stone, majdan - pit). According to an old testimony "it may be freely said that all of the old buildings in Belgrade.... have been built of stone excavated here". In the catacombs left after the excavations of stone blocks, arsenals and military warehouses have been located for a long time, and these catacombs have been also used as shelters and first-aid places for wounded soldiers. During the siege of Belgrade in 1806, Karađorđe set a camp and pitched his tent here. After the Second Serbian Insurrection, Knez Miloš Obrenović started to build a Serbian town district in Savamala and about 1826 ordered that the old Serbian cemetery be moved from Varoš-kapija to Tašmajdan. At the plateau of Tašmajdan, the old St. Mark's Church was built in 1835 (destroyed in the bombing of Belgrade on April 6, 1941). On November 30, 1830, at Tašmajdan, the Sultan's hatišerif (charter) on the internal independence of Serbia was read. In 1909, the first Seismological Station was built, and it still exists today. At Tašmajdan and around it, there are today the St. Mark's Church (the new one, built in 1931-1936), the Russian Church (1924), the Main Post Office (1934), the Sport Center "Tašmajdan", the "Taš" and "Metropol Palace" hotels, the "Madera" restaurant, Radio-Television of Serbia, children's amusement park... |