bg Belgrade

King Petar I Elementary School

- Kralja Petra 7 -
The construction of the two-story building, which was built for educational purposes, took place between 1905 and 1907. The building was built according to a design that came from the hand of the Serbian architect , who was the first female graduate architect in Serbia. It was built to house the King Elementary School, which was founded in 1718 and is the oldest surviving cultural and educational institution in Serbia. It was the first school in Serbia that introduced the teacher notebooks and gym classes and is the location of the first basketball match played in Belgrade. There is even an older predecessor of the school, which was called the Little Greek School. During the Austrian occupation of northern Serbia that took place between 1718 and 1739, it was to be closed by the Austrian authorities in 1718. By 1819 the school had two and in 1829 three teachers, among which were the teachers and . The building managed to avoid the fate of almost all other representative buildings in Belgrade as it wasn't damaged in the while in the , it was damaged on October 20, 1944, the very day Belgrade was liberated from the German occupation. In the post-war period, after 1950, all the installations were modernized and the school furniture was replaced with a more modern one.
The building after October 20, 1944
The top of the building, which is built in the styles of Academic and Art Nouveau, consists of several balustrades containing and piers, as well as a part adorned with a pointed , two , and an adorned with six . The underneath it is embellished with loads of , which are decorated with foliage. This also counts for the two that support the pointed pediment, which are placed above the second floor windows. The part of the building contains four , which are crowned with an Ionic . In addition, this part of the building is also decorated with laurel branches, garland wreaths, and two fragments decorated with containing the image of Vuk Karadžić and Dositej Obradović. A is placed above the first floor windows and above some of the second floor windows, some of which are adorned with acanthus foliage. Either a fragment containing guttae or a containing a total of seven balusters is placed underneath the second floor windows.
An old colorized postcard that shows the building