Monument to the Victor

The Monument to the Victor was erected in 1928 in the Upper Bourg of the Belgrade Fortress, on the tenth anniversary of the breakthrough of the Salonika Front. The monument consists of a bronze male figure, the work of Ivan Meštrović, sculptor, and the plinth conceived as a Doric column with fluting, placed on a high cubic base. The sculpture itself was made in 1913 as the final motif of a monumental fountain, planned for the Terazije Plateau. Meštrović conceived the fountain as a monument to freedom and liberation from the five centuries long Ottoman rule. The final works were postponed because of the beginning of WWI, so that the figure was eventually erected on the Upper Bourg plateau and its silhouette is visible from everywhere. The name of the monument has its origins in its dedication to the Salonika Front and the victory of the Serbian army in WWI. Its original title was The Harbinger of Victory. The Gratitude to France monument and this statue dedicated to the Victor are among a very small number of contemporary style monumental public memorials erected in Belgrade between the two world wars