Ćele Kula
Ćele Kula [ tɕel̩e kula ] ( Serbian - Cyrillic Ћеле-кула , German skull tower) is a tower in the Serbian city of Niš . It was built by the Ottomans from the bones and skulls of Serbian rebels who fell in the Battle of Čegar in the First Serbian Uprising on May 31, 1809. The French writer Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) described the tower in his book Voyage en Orient , in which he addresses the atrocities committed by the Ottomans on the Serbian population.
Building
Ćele Kula has a rectangular shape and is only three meters high today. It was built on the orders of Hurşid Ahmed Pasha from calcium oxide , sand and the skull bones of the insurgents, whose bodies were previously filled with cotton and sent to Constantinople . Each side of the tower had 14 rows with 17 openings each, where the skull bones were walled in. When it was completed, there were 952 skulls out of a total of around 3,000 dead. Today only 58 have survived, as most of them were stolen or taken out over time to be "buried".
A chapel was built around the tower in 1892 according to plans by the Belgrade architect Dimitrie T. Leko to protect and stabilize the structure.
As a military hospital built its complex around the tower, the tower was damaged by bombs nearby during World War II , as was the glass roof structure of the chapel.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alphonse de Lamartine: Voyage en Orient , Paris 1833, pp. 273/274
Web links
Coordinates: 43 ° 18 ′ 43.5 " N , 21 ° 55 ′ 25.5" E