Skadarlija () is a vintage street, an urban neighborhood and former municipality of Belgrade, Serbia, located in the Belgrade municipality of Stari Grad (Old Town). Skadarlija partially preserves the ambience of traditional urban architecture, including archaic urban organization, and is known as the main bohemian quarter of Belgrade, similar to Montmartre in Paris. Since 1967, Skadarlija has been protected by law as a spatial cultural-historical unit.
After Kalemegdan, Skadarlija is the second-most visited tourist attraction in Belgrade, contributing a third of the city's foreign-currency income.
Location
Skadarlija is located less than north-west of Terazije, central Belgrade. It begins right below the Republic Square and stretches along the short, winding Skadarska Street and the surroundings streets of Zetska and Cetinjska. One of the most famous streets in Belgrade, Skadarska is less than long. It connects the Despot Stefan Boulevard with the Dušanova Street, near the Bajloni open greenmarket and the Mira Trailović Square, where it extends into the neighborhood of Dorćol. Neighborhoods of Kopitareva Gradina and Jevremovac are to the east.
Though today the term is mostly applied to the street only, Skadarlija is a former municipality of Belgrade and a wider quarter which includes some 20 neighboring streets.
Administration
Skadarlija became a separate municipality of Belgrade in 1952, after the previous post-World War II division of Belgrade into raions from 1945 to 1952 ended. That municipality included a large portion of urban Belgrade, mainly the Danube oriented neighborhoods like Dorćol, Jalija, Stari Grad, etc. By the 1953 census, municipality of Skadarlija had a population of 31,281. On 1 January 1957 it merged into the new municipality of Stari Grad and Skadarlija became a "local community" (mesna zajednica), sub-municipal administrative unit, within the municipality. According to the censuses, the local community of Skadarlija had a population of 7,399 in 1981, 7,074 in 1991 and 5,942 in 2002. Municipality of Stari Grad later abolished local communities.
History Origin
First houses in the vicinity of the area were built in c.1717. The area was mostly empty heath, stretching between the city's outer gates and the village of Palilula. First settlement in the zone of the modern street was recorded c.1825. This area, the Danube slope, unlike the Sava slope where Savamala is located, was settled spontaneously. The proper history of Skadarlija began in 1830 with the settlement of Gypsies in the abandoned trenches in front of the ramparts. As the expansion was not planned, the settlers buried the trench, and adapted the area, as they liked. The Serbs and the Turks began settling in 1835, building the first proper houses with gardens, so the street stretched between two gates of the Belgrade Fortress: Stambol Gate and Vidin Gate.
The 1854 town plan of Belgrade reveals that the Gypsy hovels had been replaced by brick buildings into which artisans, caterers, petty clerks and others moved. The whole locality was referred to as the Gypsy Quarter, Gypsy Alley or and remained a Romani settlement until 1870. In that period, the stream called Bibijin potok ("Bibija stream"), which originates under the modern Politika building in the Makedonska Street, flowed down the alley, crossing it. The stream was named after Bibija, the Romani deity of salvation. At the time, Belgrade was divided into quarters, and the stream was an administrative border between the quarters of Palilula and Dorćol (Stari Grad). As Palilula limited the playing of music to midnight, people would then jump across the stream in the Dorćol section to continue with festivities.
An aqueduct was later constructed which conducted the stream underground, which still flows below the street. The aqueduct was essentially a wall through the center of the street, and it also conducted water to the local households from the central pump in Terazije. Still, during the heavy rains or melting of the snow, the stream would still form and flow down the middle of the street. The largest arch of the aqueduct was named Skadar, after the town (today in Albania), so in 1872 the street was named Skadarska ulica. Serbian for "Skadar street", it is still the street's official name. As of 2018, Skadarska is among only 29 streets in Belgrade which never changed their names since the first naming of the city streets in 1872. The name was shortly changed to Ružina Street, though, during World War I by the occupational Austro-Hungarian administration, but never by the Belgrade administration. 1872 is also the year when a "modern" urban development of the street began, because this is when the first urban plans for the streets were made.
Bohemian quarter
Soon after the aqueduct was built, the first khans were built along the foothill of the wall. They were the precursors of later kafanas. Skadarlija began to acquire its bohemian character in the last few decades of the 19th century, and particularly after 1901, when the well-known Dardaneli inn, located where the National Museum in Belgrade is today, was demolished and its guests, prominent writers and actors, moved to the Skadarlija inns or kafanas. In the early 20th century there were 15 kafanas in Skadarlija, including: Tri šešira ("Three Hats"), Dva jelena ("Two Deer"), Zlatni bokal ("The Golden Chalice"), Bandist, East, Guild, Vuk Karadžić, Bums keler, Miloš Obilić and The two Sergeants, Mala Pijaca ("Little Greenmarket"). The first three of these still survive today, accompanied by some new restaurants like Ima dana ("There will be days"), Skadarlija (demolished in 2006), Dva bela goluba ("Two White Doves"). In the late 19the century, the beginning of the street was a location of "Pašonin bulevar", the very first Belgrade's music hall.
As of 2022, the Tri šešira, founded in 1864, is the oldest, still operational kafana in Skadarlija and second overall in Belgrade, after the ?. With other kafanas being closed or relocated to Skadarlija, and closing of the most popular "Velika Srbija" inn in 1905 to make place for the Hotel Moskva in Terazije, by c.1910 Skadarlija became to central point of Belgrade's bohemianism.
The end section of Skadarlija is known as the Skadarlija atrium. It is mostly occupied by the brewery that belonged to one of the most distinguished Belgrade families before World War II, the Czech-originating Bajloni family. The brewery was originally established in 1850 by Filip Đorđević. He previously purchased the equipment from the failed brewery of Czech migrant and miller expert Johan Weinhappl founded in 1839, and installed it in the ending section of the Cetinjska Street, which forms the atrium with Skadarlija. The manually operated brewery became known as Little Brewery, to distinguish it from the Big Brewery, opened by the royal family in Savamala in 1840. It was purchased by the Bajloni family in 1880, who introduced the steam machines.
It produced "Aleksandar" beer, made from thermal waters that spring out in the brewery's backyard. When Bajloni began digging for the foundations of his brewery in 1892, he discovered the bones of the mammoths and skulls of the Neanderthal Krapina man, who was jokingly nicknamed in the press of the day "the first Belgrader". During the German-Austrian occupation in World War I, the skull disappeared. The well is located under the surface. After 1945, the brewery became part of the "BIP" brewery, but was later closed. The spring water was bottled for drinking until the early 2000s. Under the brewery is a complex of lagums (subterranean galleries or catacombes), which were used as a storage rooms for the beer barrels. By 2008, the entire inner complex is abandoned and slated for demolition. However, as the project of massive reconstruction failed, the brewery became home for many coffeehouses and clubs.
The houses in the street were small, with mud plastered walls and roofs covered with flat tiles (). The houses had small yards with gardens and water taps and wooden, plank fences (). Only occasional houses had a porch. By the 1930s, many survived while smaller number of houses was demolished and the new buildings were built instead. The street itself was paved with the rough, lumpy cobblestones.
20th-century revitalization
By the end of World War II, Skadarlija was in bad shape. At one point, not counting two buffets at the beginning and the end of the street, "Split" and "Skadar", only three kafanas survived: "(Velika) Skadarlija", "Dva jelena" and "Tri šešira". Other venues were closed due to the nationalization, lack of professional staff, rationed food and drinks, and the general state of adversity after the war. State organized "administrative provisioning" for kafanas, in case of Skadarlija and the entire Belgrade's First Raion (modern Stari Grad municipality), from the central storage facility in the Vlajkovićeva Street. Thus, even those kafanas which worked, had no permanent menus, as they never knew what groceries will be delivered. After the first signs of economic recovery, Hospitality Secretariat of the First Raion decided to revitalize Skadarlija's kafanas in 1952. Works started first in "Skadarlija" in 1953, which was reopened on 31 December 1953. New Year's Eve celebration was attended by the members of the new, Communist elite, including president Josip Broz Tito and the first lady Jovanka Broz.
Urban story claims that the idea of transforming the street into what it is today came in c.1957, during the mulled beer drinking contest between the poet , and writer and artist Zuko Džumhur in "Tri šešira". Skadarlija was protected by the law in 1967, when the decision of its reconstruction was also announced. The renovation and restoration began in 1968 in accordance with the designs made by a group of prominent artists: architect Uglješa Bogunović (head of the project), Zuko Džumhur, painter Mario Maskareli, sculptor , painter and writer Momo Kapor, among others. They managed to preserve its existing values and introduce modern facilities without interfering with its historical features. In the late 1960s, Skadarlija regained fame as the center of youth and bohemian artists of Belgade. Plans for further adaptations were made in 1977 but remained on paper until 2008.
Restaurant "Ima dana" was opened in 1969. One of the first modern clubs in the neighborhood was "Monokl", opened across the "Tri šešira" in the 1970s. Famous folk singer Silvana Armenulić performed at the opening. DJ was Maksa Ćatović, who was previously a disc jockey in "Cepelin" in Tašmajdan.
In 1985 theatre director Zorica Jevremović Munitić founded Children's Street Theater /Ulično dečje pozorište/ in Skadarlija. The core of the troupe was made up of Romany children who lived in Skadarlija, 'white' children' from Dorcol (a nearby prestigious Belgrade neighborhood), Romany children from the favelas of the Belgrade suburb of Mirijevo (who sell flowers in Skadarlija), professional actors and painters who live in Skadarlija, a Skadarlija fortune-teller, clowns, fire eaters, and alternative artists (musicians, painters).
The house of Đura Jakšić, a well-known writer and painter who lived and died in Skadarlija, has been turned into a meeting place for the poets participating in the Skadarlija Evenings event, after it was fully renovated in 1986. It became the cultural center of the quarter.
21st century