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Photo: Bojan Lazarevic, ZivojinMisic slike, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This is an old urban quarter. It was built in the first half of 18th century. It was a street full of tinkers and other craftsmen, together with their houses coming from Turkish period. Unfortunately, only some of those are preserved today and protected by the state. The street is packed with cafes, and is a favorite site for the visitors.
Tinkers Alley, also known as Coppersmith Alley, is an old urban downtown in Niš, Serbia, which was built in the first half of 18th century. It was a street full of tinkers and other crafts, together with craftsmen houses deriving from Turkish period.
Cele kula
Skull Tower was built in the 19th century by the Turks from the skulls of the Serbs killed in the battle of Cegar, near Nis, in May 1809. It is rectangular, about 3 m high and was built from quicklime, sand and the skinned skulls, upon the order of Khurshid Pasha who had first sent the skulls filled with cotton to the Sultan in Istanbul. Each side of the tower has 14 rows with 17 openings where the skulls were embedded. There were 952 skulls, but today only 58 have remained. The rest were pulled out to be buried or were lost in time. In 1892 a chapel was built around the tower, according to the design of the Belgrade architect Dimitrie T. Leko. The skulls are situated inside the small chapel consisting of four glass walls. Europe came to know about this horrible monument of Serbian martyrdom from the work "Voyage to the East" by the French poet Alphonse de Lamartine (1790 - 1869).
Over the remains of a Roman military camp, then Roman town called Naissus, and finally the remains of a destroyed Byzantine fortification, the Turks built a strong fortress at the beginning of 18th century. The construction of this fortress lasted from 1719 to 1723. It was built with the help of local laborers, Istanbul stonecutters and bricklayers. Beside those well saved walls and gates, numerous facilities remain from various periods, such as the armory, Turkish steam bath, Turkish post station, Bali-mosque, powderroom and prison.
Church of Holy Trinity of Rusalia sits above the village of Gornji Matejevac. Rusalia is the most attractive ancient structure in Niš. The church was built after the order of a local Byzantine dignitary in the first half of 11th century.
Officers' Club Exhibition Space
The building of the "Youth Home" Restaurant was erected in 1890. At first, the "Bulevar" restaurant was situated in the building. The Army General Staff bought the building in 1903 and turned it into an Officers' Home, which remained there until 1941. At the beginning of World War I this building was in the focus of public attention as the centre of the political life of Serbia. On December 7, 1914 a war session of the National Assembly was held there. On that occasion the Assembly made the "Niš Declaration", which explicitly stated the military objectives of Serbia - to fight for the liberation and unification of the Balkan peoples. On May 6, 1915 the Yugoslav Congress was held in this building. The Congress issued the "Niš Resolution" which once again emphasized the need for national unity.
Crveni Krst
The first Nazi concentration camp in the former Yugoslavia, constructed in 1941. One of the few fully preserved concentration camps in Europe, almost intact since 1944, 'Lager Nis' was the venue of the dramatic escape in February 1942 when about 100 prisoners managed to flee.
a monumental sculpture representing three enormous fists was erected in honor of 10,000 people, mostly Serbs and Romanies, but also about 1,100 Jews, executed in this place during World War Two. The monument is the work of sculptor Ivan Sabolic and was erected in 1963.