St. Mark’s Church
St. Mark’s Church or Church of St. Mark is a Serbian Orthodox church located in the Tašmajdan park in Belgrade, Serbia, near the Parliament of Serbia. It was built in the Serbo-Byzantine style by the Krstić brothers, completed in 1940, on the site of a previous church dating to 1835. It is one of the largest churches in the country. There is a small Russian church next to St. Mark’s.
The church, dedicated to Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark, was built in the Interwar period between 1931 and 1940 in the Tašmajdan Park, in the centre of Belgrade. It was built slightly north of a wooden 19th-century church that was destroyed in 1941.Due to the rapid growth of the city and population increase, it became necessary in the beginning of the 20th century to build a larger church in the Belgrade quarter of Palilula. Frequent wars did not allow this until 1930 when a pair of Belgrade architects, the brothers Petar and Branko Krstić, both professors of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Architecture, designed the plans for the new St. Mark’s Church. The present building of St. Mark’s Church was built according to their drawings between 1931 and 1940. The eruption of World War II interrupted the full completion of the church. Only the construction work was finished. Divine service took place in the new church during the war in 1941[2] and after it until November 14, 1948 in the adapted narthex of the church. On that date the church was consecrated (by Serbian Patriarch Gavrilo V) and the church opened for divine service. There were plans to decorate the whole interior with frescoes. The external walls are in two colors of natural materials in the Serbo-Byzantine style. The church bell tower is a part of the church itself on the west side.
In June 2018 it was announced that a monument to Patriarch Pavle, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church from 1990 to 2009, will be erected on the green area between the newly finished plateau and the tram stop in Tašmajdan Park. The 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) tall bronze monument was authored by Zoran Maleš. It was placed in the park on 13 November 2018 and dedicated on 15 November, an anniversary of Pavle’s death.