Urban Planning

Due to its imposing design, function, as well as central location directly across the street from the Government of Serbia, the General Staff building has become a symbol of the 1999 bombing, and everything consciously or subconsciously connected to that event - the undeniable trauma from those times, the self-righteous indignation at the “unprovoked” illegal NATO aggression and violation of Serbia’s territorial integrity, as well as the all-consuming stagnation and inability to recover from the defeat and create a functional society.  

The statements by state and city officials since the beginning of the construction works on the monument have made it clear that the monument is not only about Stefan Nemanja or medieval history. The war in Kosovo and the NATO bombing of FR Yugoslavia in 1999 constitute key points of the official memory politics in which the current state actors invest incredible efforts. 

What happened in Skopje was a neoliberal appropriation of the public space. While everyone talks about the state expropriation of land in the city centre, coloured by a symbolic nationalist attack on all senses, the capitalist plunder of the public space throughout the city happened quietly - and that is the most important element of this endeavour.

The monument to the founder of the Nemanjić dynasty has been the subject of numerous criticisms, both because of its astronomical price and its over-dimensioned size, the location and controversial aesthetics. What does the monument to Stefan Nemanja say about the memory politics that the regime of Aleksandar Vučić wants to promote?

Although the topic of public monuments has not ceased to be the subject of various disputes in the last thirty years, it became even more current in Serbia recently when the construction of a megalomaniac bronze figure of Grand Župan Stefan Nemanja was decided and started in front of the former railway station in Belgrade.