SmederevoWelcome

Republic Square represents the central part of the contemporary town fabric of Smederevo. With its historical continuity, triangular urban form and representative heritage, it shows the identity of the town itself and together with the Fortress expresses its recognizable profile.

Republic Square was established in the first half of the 19th century, after the Second Serbian uprising, on the place where the Big Market connected the Serbian and Turkish part of the town. During the time of Knez Milos, in 1837, was made the Plan of Development, with which the shaping of this space as a central town square began. With the building of the church of St. George in 1854 was the basics of the further development defined. With this religious building, the dome, around which the whole town gravitates, was also the center of Smederevo itself definitely founded.

New buildings were raised: in 1888 the Prefecture and in 1926 the City Court, which with their architectural and stylistic expression tell of the creation of an ambience of a European town center. Thereby was the shape of the square finally regulated. The homogenization and shaping of the spatial structure contributed, in the time between the world wars, to the building of several objects in different styles and with different functions: The Ninic hotel building (today the Town Gallery), and immediately next to it, a business-apartment building that has been shaped to fit in, the building of the former pharmacy Pantazijevic which solved the problem of the corner at the entrance to the Square; the building of the former library (today Historical Archives).

During the Second World War, the most valuable objects on the square were badly damaged and renovated more recently. After the war, new urbanistic projects as a rule did not respect the peculiarities of the ambience, so that in certain segments the spatial unity destroyed, especially by new building.

With the beginning of the new century, a more positive way of handling this space came about. Reconstruction and ground-floor arrangements were done with the aim of making both the functional and the aesthetic values of the square more contemporary and making them stand up. Dominated by the Temple of the Holy Great Martyr George the Victorious and there are a monument to fallen soldiers in World War I, County Administration Building, the Gallery of Modern Art and the famous fountain, a meeting place, rest and entertainment among city’s youth and senior citizens.