Baroque Belgrade: Transformation 1717-1739

Abstract

The reception of the Baroque heritage in Belgrade is a very intriguing question for the very fact that what has remained of it is extremely modest from the material viewpoint and concealed under layers of later building projects and spatial planning conceptions. For the few experts who research the different phenomena of Baroque culture and art in our country, this short-lived but extremely important period under Habsburg rule, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, represents a crucial step towards the creation of a modern Belgrade. It was a city in transformation, where the Oriental, mercantile sehir gave way to the European monumental Baroque in a large-scale reconstruction of its urban structure and buildings. The new shaping of space, designed according to the template of fortified Baroque cities, the pivot of which was the regular urban matrix with visual markers – monumental barracks, palaces and squares – was to convey the Habsburg Monarchy’s cultural and political messages in the newly conquered territories, in other words, connect Belgrade to the Central European culture and idea of the Baroque.The monograph is the product of an effort by a group of experts, specialists in the various aspects of the Baroque heritage in Belgrade and Serbia, viewed in the key of political history and social and cultural phenomena at the beginning of the Modern Age.