National Assembly of Serbia Attraction

Belgrade Attractions - The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia building from the list Belgrade Attractions is located at the beginning of the street Bulevar Kralja Aleksandra. As the Federal Assembly it has been known since the time of Yugoslavia, and in the meantime it has been operating as the Assembly of Serbia and Montenegro until 23rd of July 2006, when it became the official house of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia.

The foundation stone was laid by King Petar I Karadjordjevic in 1907 and the building was designed by architect Jovan Ilkić. However, in 1836 on a plot of today's National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia there was an equally imposing and magnificent building, but it had quite a different purpose. In fact during the reign of the Ottoman Empire on the site of today's assembly there  was a mosque, Batal-mosque to be precise, until 1789 known as the Ejnehan mosque.
At that time in Belgrade it was the largest and most famous mosque in whose immediate vicinity was a burial ground for famous Turks. The final decision on the question of demolition of the mosque was that of Milos Obrenovic’s. In this period out of only 11 mosques in Belgrade the Batal-mosque was the main place of worship for Turks.
In a number of conflicts it has been destroyed and then rebuilt, but in 1766 it was completely repaired and reconstructed for the last time. In the coming upheavals in Belgrade, in 1789 the Ejenhan mosque was seriously damaged and that was the first recorded time that the name of Batal mosque was mentioned, where batal means abandoned in turkish.
Shortly after the departure of the Ottoman Turks the old Batal-mosque in 1878 was demolished to the ground by the order of the governor Blaznavac, and the demolition was paid for with 230 ducats. The demolition was performed by Cincars.
The first project of the assembly was made by Konstantin Jovanović in 1891. But because of political events and economic conditions the construction of the facility has been delayed for several years, after what it was entrusted to the architect Jovan Ilkić, a winner of the newly announced competition for the design of the building of the National Assembly of Serbia.
The official start of construction of the palace was marked with the laying of the foundation stone on 27th of August in 1907 in the presence of King Petar I Karadjordjevic and the Crown Prince George, as well as deputies and the diplomatic corps.