February 9, 2009

The Ascension Church in Belgrade

I found incredible nice pictures of this church by jaime.silva

The Ascension church (Crkva-Svetog-Vaznesenja) in Belgrade is not very well known, but because of a personal reason, I have a connection
to that church and so I wanted to write about its simple architecture and its beautiful interiors.

I found myself praying in front of this wonderful iconostatic, with a strong winter midday sun shining through the windows. The church lays in the middle of Belgrade's trafficked roads, but inside this little church it's completely peaceful. An unforgetable moment!

The church was built in 1863 following a project of
Pavle Stanišić and Jovan Ristić, while the construction works were performed by Josip Štok and Fernand Stevanov, and the contractor was Koča Z. Popović. The order for its construction was issued by Knez Mihailo Obrenović , and the works were financed through donations of many Belgrade citizens.

The church was shaped in accordance with then prevailing romantism, following examples of the old Serbian monasteries, first of all
the Ravanica monastery

The first icons were painted by Nikola Marković in 1864, but later, this task was assigned to the most famous painter of that time, Steva Todorović, who completed this enterprise in 1881. Also, the original wall paintings made by Nikola Marković have been replaced with new compositions made by Andrey Bitsenko in 1937.

A beautiful shot of the Interior by jaime.silva

The church is rich in collections of icons, old books, articles of gold and other things from the XIX century.
 


Photo by jaime.silva

1 comment: