Oplenac

Start with your feet. The path up Oplenac hill is quiet, lined with trees, and the air is cooler here than in the town below. Then the church comes into view through the branches. It is white marble, almost too white, and in clear weather it glows against the green of the Šumadija hills. Five domes rise above it. Before you know a single fact, the place tells you it was built to be noticed.

This is the Church of Saint George, the burial church of the Karađorđević family. They were one of the two royal houses that ruled Serbia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Topola, the small town at the foot of the hill, was the home ground of the family's founder. So the church on Oplenac is a memorial to a dynasty, not a parish church. It stands on the land where that dynasty began.

The founder was a man called Đorđe Petrović. History knows him as Karađorđe, which means Black George. In 1804 he led the First Serbian Uprising against Ottoman rule. Topola was his base, and he fortified the town. Down in the centre of Topola, you can still visit what remains of his small fortress and the church he built there. Oplenac, up on the hill, was the place his descendants chose to honour him.

The man who built this church was his grandson, King Peter the First. He wanted a single place where his family could rest together. Work began in the years before the First World War. Then history interrupted. The Balkan Wars came, and then the Great War, and Serbia was occupied. The building suffered during the occupation. It was finished only after the war, under Peter's son, King Alexander, and consecrated around 1930.

Look closely at the outside walls. The marble comes from Venčac, a mountain only a short distance away. Local stone was a deliberate choice. The style is called Serbian-Byzantine — a modern revival of the church architecture of medieval Serbia, which itself grew out of the Byzantine Empire, the Greek-speaking Christian empire centred on Constantinople. The domes, the arches and the cross-shaped plan all point back to that older tradition.

Above the main entrance, look for the royal coat of arms. It marks the building as a statement of the state, not only of faith. Then step inside, and let your eyes adjust. This is the first surprise for most visitors. The exterior is cool and pale. The interior is the opposite. Almost every surface glitters with colour.

Those walls are not painted. They are mosaic. Tens of millions of tiny pieces of coloured glass cover the walls, the arches and the domes. Together they form hundreds of separate scenes. And here is the second surprise. Most of these images are not original designs. They are copies of frescoes from medieval Serbian monasteries, scattered across Serbia, Kosovo and North Macedonia. In a sense, this church is a museum of Serbian medieval painting, translated into glass.

That was the idea. A visitor could stand in one place and see images from churches spread over hundreds of kilometres. Some of those original frescoes have since been damaged or lost. So the copies here have a value of their own. As you walk around, notice the faces of the medieval kings and saints. Many Serbian rulers of the Middle Ages appear here, painted long ago in their own monasteries, and now gathered on these walls.

Look up at the large chandelier hanging under the central dome. It is a heavy bronze piece, and it catches the light from the windows. Locals tell a story about it — that it was cast in part from weapons used by Serbian soldiers in the wars of the early twentieth century. Treat it as a popular tale. Either way, it fits the mood of the building, where faith, war and memory sit very close together.

The tomb of Karađorđe himself lies inside the church, as does the tomb of King Peter the First, the builder. But much of the family rests below you. Stairs lead down to the crypt. The mosaics continue there, in a softer, darker light. Along the walls are the graves of several generations of the dynasty. Among them is King Alexander, who was assassinated in Marseille in 1934.

The story of this crypt did not end in the twentieth century. After the Second World War, Yugoslavia became a socialist state, and the royal family lived in exile. Some members died and were buried abroad. Decades later, several of them were brought home and laid to rest here. The last king, Peter the Second, died in the United States and was reburied on Oplenac in 2013. The crypt is still, in a quiet way, a working family grave.

When you come back outside, take a walk around the hilltop. Near the church stands a small house connected with King Peter the First, now used as a museum. The grounds are calm and green, with benches under the trees. And look out over the slopes. This is wine country. The Oplenac area has a long tradition of vineyards, and the royal family kept a winery in Topola. The hills you see are part of that same landscape.

It is worth pausing for a moment to think about the scale of this place. Topola is a small town. Yet on this hill, a royal family built a marble church filled with glass, a gallery of the medieval past, and a resting place for kings. It says a great deal about how Serbia in the early twentieth century wanted to see itself — rooted in its medieval kingdoms, and proud of its fight for independence.

Before you leave, turn back once more toward the church. Notice how the white stone changes with the light, warm at the edges, grey in the shade. Inside, behind those doors, the glass keeps its colour in the dark. Listen to the wind in the trees and the sound of gravel under your shoes. Then let the path carry you down the hill, toward Topola, where the whole story began.