bg Belgrade

Serbian Crown Hotel

- Kneza Mihaila 56 -
The two-story building, which was originally built with a residential function for the Serbian Crown Hotel, was built in 1869. At the time it was the most modern and best-equipped hotel in Belgrade, built for the owner, the merchant Milija Pavlović, who opened an inn in this building in 1870. The first known tenant of the hotel was the Jew Jovan Vuger. Two years after opening, in 1872, Pavlović sold the hotel to the merchant Konstantin Jagodić from , and a decade later his heirs sold it to the Krsmanović brothers, famous Belgrade merchants. During the , in 1876, foreign journalists stayed in it, as well as in 1902, when a journalistic congress was held in this hotel. At the beginning of the , the building was damaged and did not work until 1916. The Allied of Belgrade that took place during the , damaged the building once again. After the renovation, in 1943, the building was occupied by the German occupation forces and abandoned in October 1944.
An old postcard that shows the building on the left
In 1946, the building was handed over to the National Library of Serbia, whose building was completely destroyed during the Allied bombing. A year later a reading room was opened there and the process of creating a new library collection began. The National Library of Serbia used the building until 1967, then, until 1975, it housed the Academy for Theatre, Film, Radio and Television and then the Faculty of Philosophy and History. In 1975, the building was vacated and conservation work and space adaptation began for the needs of the Belgrade City Library, which moved into the building in October 1986. The Belgrade City Library was founded in 1931 and is a parent library for more than a dozen municipal libraries and their branches.
The building in 1930
The part underneath the roof of the building, which is built in the styles of Eclectic and Neo-Renaissance, is lavishly decorated with a motif, , foliage, and . Above the second floor windows, which are flanked by that are crowned with a Corinthian , you can see a straight , as well as two adorned with even more rosettes, which is also the case with the parts underneath these same windows. The two balconies, which are located on both the northern and the western sides of the building, are both supported by three and secured with a wrought iron railing embellished with .
An old photo that shows the building