Belgrade, Serbia: The Naked Boy And The City That Wouldn’t Die

You don’t expect a church to be carved into the side of a fortress. But Belgrade rarely does what’s expected. Ružica Church greeted me with cold air, golden light, and chandeliers made of war.

Above, the chandeliers didn’t glitter with crystal or glass. Instead, they gleamed with cold metal—rifle bullets, pistol cartridges, sabers, and cannon shells. Not mere decoration, but remnants of battle transformed into sacred light. Crafted by soldiers and local craftsmen from World War I debris, these chandeliers carry a quiet story: pain reshaped into hope, destruction recast as illumination.

Inside, golden mosaics told their own tale. Here, Christ bore grey hair—wisdom forged through suffering and endurance against life’s harshest trials. The Twelve Apostles stood without animals or symbols, stripped to their bare humanity. The church’s air held no instruments, only raw human voices in the choir—a tradition sacred in Serbian Orthodox liturgy. Without music’s adornment, the voices felt vulnerable, yet profoundly powerful.

What struck me most was that the priests here are married men, combining family life with spiritual guidance. This grounding of the sacred in the everyday honoured a faith intimately intertwined with human complexities and scars—a faith that embraces life’s wounds instead of hiding them.

From this quiet reverence, my eyes shifted outside to the fortress walls, where a lone figure stands tall and bare against the sky—Pobednik, the Victor. Sculpted by Ivan Meštrović in 1913, the statue embodies Serbia’s resilience and victory. But like the city itself, his story is layered. The Great War delayed his unveiling until 1928. Deemed too bold, too naked for the city centre, he was placed on Kalemegdan Fortress’s edge, overlooking the Sava and Danube rivers—the very meeting point where empires clashed and continents met.

Belgrade beneath him is a paradox—both a hub of trade and a battlefield target. Destroyed and rebuilt 45 times, each wound might have been fatal. Yet the city endures.

Pobednik wears no armour, wields no sword. Instead, he stands quietly—vulnerable and unyielding—a naked boy holding a falcon, symbol of vigilance and freedom. His power is not in conquest but in presence, raw and human. He reminds us that true strength is survival, not domination.

The church and statue speak in different tongues but share one story. Bullets become chandeliers, instruments of death turned symbols of faith. A naked boy stands firm, vulnerability transformed into dignity. Belgrade’s narrative is creation born from destruction, light rising from shadow, art forged in chaos’s fire.

This city teaches a profound truth: art does not spring from calm, but from chaos and pain. It is revolution—born from wounds aching to be seen, heard, transformed.

Reflecting on this, I see mirrors in today’s torn worlds—Gaza, Ukraine, countless places broken and scarred. Yet the human impulse to rebuild, to create, to hope remains. Creating art then is no escape—it is defiance. The voice of those who refuse silence or forgetting. Like Pobednik, we stand—naked, vulnerable, unbowed.

Belgrade’s scars remind us survival is more than rebuilding walls or borders; it is reclaiming spirit. Its resilience, echoed in sacred light and steadfast gaze, shows that from ashes rise faith, hope, beauty. And so, even a city shattered 45 times still dreams. A naked boy still stands tall. And art continues to cast light where once was darkness.

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