Panorama Cultural Society

On June 13, 1798, having endured a 40-day ordeal at the hands of their torturers, the eight Greek patriots were strangled in the dark prison of the Nebojša Tower in Belgrade, and afterwards their corpses were thrown into the Danube. They had been handed over to the Turkish pasha by the Austrian authorities a month earlier, on May 10. The martyrs included Eustratios Argentis and Antonios Koronios from Chios, the brothers Panayiotis and Ioannis Emmanuel from Kastoria, Theocharis Tourountzias from Siatista, Ioannins Karatzas from Cyprus, the physician Demetrios Nikolaidis from Epirus and the uprising’s main protagonist, Rigas Feraios, from Velestinos in Thessaly.

The Nebojša Tower, or “Tower of Rigas”, situated on the bank of the Danube, was built in 1460, extended in 1720 and recently converted into a highly interesting museum. The project was the result of Greek and Serbian collaboration through the agency of the European Centre of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Monuments (ΕΚΒΜΜ), on the part of the Greeks, and the Municipality of Belgrade, on the part of the Serbs. The museum was inaugurated on April 29, 2011. One month later, as part of Panorama’s trip to Serbia, we had the opportunity to visit the Tower, which is part of the Belgrade Fortress. We were impressed by the museological concept behind the renovation and the trilingual labels (Serbian, Greek and English), flattered by the reception we were given by the local guides and deeply moved by the presentation of the place where Rigas and his comrades, as well as many Serbian patriots, where martyred.

It would seem that Rigas’s Balkan vision has finally taken form in the very place where he breathed his last. The Tower museum is a truly admirable project.