Crveni Krst (Belgrade)

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Crveni Krst or colloquially just Krst (Serbian Cyrillic: Црвени Крст) is an urban neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is located in Belgrade's municipalities of Vračar (larger part) and Zvezdara.

1 Location
2 History
3 Characteristics
4 References

[edit] Location

Crveni Krst is located in the east-central part of the municipality of Vračar and west part of the municipality of Zvezdara, around the small square of the same name. It borders the neighborhoods of Čubura on the west and south, Kalenić on the north-west and Đeram on the north.

[edit] History

The area of the modern Crveni Krst is in the eastern section of the Vračar field. In 1595 Ottoman grand vizier Sinan Pasha burned the remains of the major Serbian saint, Saint Sava, somewhere on the Vračar hill but after two centuries, the exact location was unknown. A majority of scholars agreed on a location on top of the hill, where the modern Temple of Saint Sava is built. However, Serbian publisher Gligorije Vozarović (1790-1848) was convinced that he had found the exact location and erected a wooden cross to mark the spot. The emerging settlement around it gradually became known as Vozarov Krst ("Vozarov[ić]'s Cross"). The Association of Saint Sava later replaced the wooden cross with a new, red one and it gave the present name to the neighborhood (crveni krst, Serbian for "red cross"). Still, the modern local community (mesna zajedinca) of the municipality of Vračar which comprises the neighborhood is officially styled Vozarev Krst (according to modern spelling, not Vozarov), with a population of 12,736 in 2002 (excluding the Zvezdara part).

[edit] Characteristics

Today, Crveni Krst is esentially an eastern extension of the neighborhood of Čubura and some city maps mark the area as Čubura, but the local community which covers the area of Crveni Krst rivals the local community which covers the area of Čubura in population (12,736 to 13,498 in 2002, respectively).

The main entrance to the Belgrade Drama Theater

The former small square, which comprises a minute park with the cross, was turned into the roundabout of the bus line 83. Still, the square remains a crossroads of five streets: Mileševska, Vojvode Šupljikca, Branka Krsmanovića, Jovana Rajića and Žička. Interestingly, while just one bus line (83) goes through the neighbourhood, four trolleybus lines do the same (lines 19, 21, 22 and 29).

The main feature in Crveni Krst is the large building of the Belgrade Drama Theater, opened in 1948 and completely reconstructed in 2003. Other important features are the complex of the Sports Center Vračar and Belgrade's Waterworks facilities.