Monument to the Unknown Hero

Listen for a moment. Up here on the summit of Avala, the noise of Belgrade drops away. You hear wind in the oak and beech trees, a few birds, and the soft scrape of shoes on stone steps. The air is cooler than in the city below. Ahead of you, a dark block of polished granite sits on the very top of the hill. It is quiet, heavy, and still. This is the Monument to the Unknown Hero.

Avala is a low, forested mountain that rises from the plain south of Belgrade. It sits less than twenty kilometres from the city centre. On clear days it is visible from many parts of the capital. For generations, Belgraders have come here to walk, to picnic, and to escape the summer heat. But the summit carries a more serious purpose. It holds a tomb, and that tomb belongs to someone whose name nobody knows.

The monument honours the soldiers who died in the wars of the early twentieth century, above all the First World War. Serbia suffered terribly in that war. It lost a very large share of its population to fighting, disease, and the winter retreat across the mountains of Albania. Many soldiers were never identified. Inside this monument rest the remains of one unknown soldier from that war. He stands for all the others who have no grave with a name.

The idea came from King Alexander the First of Yugoslavia. After the war, several countries built tombs for an unknown soldier, in Paris, London, and elsewhere. Alexander wanted a memorial of the same kind for his kingdom. Work on the monument began in the 1930s and finished in 1938. The king did not live to see it. He was assassinated in Marseille, in France, in 1934, while construction was still at an early stage.

The sculptor and architect was Ivan Meštrović, a Croatian artist and one of the best-known sculptors of his time in this part of Europe. His work appears in many cities of the former Yugoslavia and beyond. Here he chose a strict, almost ancient form. Look at the overall shape. A wide stepped base supports a rectangular hall with a flat roof. Many people compare it to the tomb of Cyrus the Great, the Persian king, in Pasargadae in today's Iran. That tomb is also a simple stone chamber on stepped platforms.

Now the material. The monument is built from dark granite brought from Jablanica, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Touch it if you can. The stone feels cold and very smooth. In bright sun it looks almost black. Under cloud it turns a deep grey. The dark colour was a deliberate choice. It gives the memorial a feeling of mourning, and it stands out sharply against the green of the forest around it.

Here is the first detail many visitors miss. Look closely at the figures that stand at the entrances. There are eight caryatids, which are sculpted female figures that take the place of columns. Each woman wears a traditional folk costume. Together they represent the different peoples and regions of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. They are mothers in mourning. Their faces are calm and serious, and their long robes fall in straight, heavy folds. Walk slowly around the monument and compare their clothing, their headscarves, and the way each one holds herself.

This choice says a lot about the moment the monument was made. In the 1930s, the kingdom was trying to build a shared identity among Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, Montenegrins, Macedonians, and others. A Croatian sculptor created a Serbian war memorial with figures from all these lands. The message was unity in grief. Today, after the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, these eight women carry a different weight. They show a country that no longer exists.

The second surprise lies under your feet. Before this monument was built, the summit held the ruins of a medieval fortress called Žrnov. It was an old stronghold that guarded the approach to Belgrade for centuries. To make room for the memorial, the remains of the fortress were destroyed with explosives. Even at the time, some people protested. Historians still discuss the loss. So this hilltop holds two layers of the past, one visible and one removed.

Inside the hall, the space is simple. The sarcophagus, a stone coffin, rests in the centre. It carries inscriptions in Cyrillic letters, the alphabet used for the Serbian language. There is no long text and no list of battles. The emptiness is part of the design. Meštrović kept the inside bare so that the visitor would focus on one thought: a single unknown man, and the many like him. Speak softly here. People still come to lay flowers.

The monument is a place of official ceremony as well. Visiting heads of state often lay wreaths here, much as they do at the tombs of unknown soldiers in other capitals. On important national days, Serbian officials and soldiers gather on the steps. On ordinary days, you are more likely to meet families, hikers, and older couples who walk up slowly and stand for a while in silence.

Before you leave the summit, turn around and look across the trees. Not far away rises Avala Tower, a tall, slender telecommunications tower. The original tower was destroyed during the NATO bombing of 1999. A new tower was built in its place and opened again in 2010. From this hill, then, you can see two answers to loss. One is a dark stone tomb for an unknown soldier. The other is a tower rebuilt within living memory.

Take a last look at the granite and at the eight mothers who guard the doors. Notice how the light moves across the stone as clouds pass. Listen again to the wind in the forest. As you walk back down the steps, the city slowly returns: traffic, voices, the ordinary life of Belgrade. Somewhere in that noise are the descendants of the people this monument remembers. The man inside has no name... but up here, he is not forgotten.