Čukur Fountain

The monument

The fountain features a bronze statue of a boy, Sava Petković, in memory of the incident caused by the Turkish soldiers which took part on the statue's site, on 15 June 1862. The official name of the sculpture is "The boy with a broken pitcher ".

The memorial fountain was erected in 1931 from the endowment fund of a merchant Toma Vanđel , the author was a Serbian academic and a sculptor Simeon Roksandić. Vlastimir Petković Kepa, who used to be an operator in Radio Belgrade, and before that a famous footballer of BSK (now ОFК Belgrade) and the Yugoslavian national football team, was the model for the memorial fountain. On 5 February 1965 the fountain was declared a cultural monument.

Vandals stole the sculpture of the boy in May 2010, banged it with a hammer and sold it to the owner of an unauthorized dump in Krnjača for 20 thousand RSD. The sculpture was devastated and broken into 22 pieces, but was ultimately repaired. The reconstruction took three months to complete and was done based on the three-dimensional scanning that Zoran Miljanović, a director of "3D world" company, had done before the sculpture was stolen.

The incident

The event near the Čukur fountain happened in the afternoon, on 15 June 1862.(according to the new calendar, 3 June according to the old one). A sultry, summer day was the reason why the young apprentice Sava, Turkish nizame (soldiers) and many others came to the spring to appease their thirst. One of the Turkish soldiers took the pitcher from Sava's hands and he began to defend himself, which made a Turkish soldier very angry, so he killed Sava, according to one version, by stabbing him with a bayonet, and according to another version, by hitting him on the head with the pitcher, and Sava fell down next to the fountain, covered with blood.

Serbian gendarmes who arrived very quickly arrested the murderers, however, other Turkish soldiers came to help them, and so the incident turned to the fierce conflict which lasted for entire night.

The news about the incident spread around Belgrade, there were gunshots everywhere and the battles began to rage in the streets. One single event initiated a series of the new and crucial ones. A Serbian terdžuman (a person negotiating with the Turkish government) Sima Nešić and a gendarme Đorđe Nišlija. Then the Serbs pulled out old guns, yataghans and handžar (a knife) and quickly overtook the Varoš Gate, and destroyed the Sava Gate and the Stambol Gate.

Then the Serbs took the Sava Gate as well, and the news spread to the other towns in Serbia. The Duke Mihailo, who was in Šabac at the time, sent the ultimatum to the Turks to leave the town until eight o'clock in the evening. The following day 16. (4) was peaceful, but the very next day, 17.(5) was crucial for Belgrade, since the shelling of Belgrade started from 56 fortress cannons. About 50 civilians and soldiers died, about 20 homes were burnt in fire, and about 357 were destroyed. Serbian population set up barricades in order to defend themselves. During July of the same year, 1862, in Kanlidža, next to Constantinople, the negotiations about the independence of Serbia started, and France, England, Russia and Austria participated too. The decision was made that the Turkish population is to move out from Serbia. During the following year, more than eight thousand Turks moved out from Serbia. At the intervention of the foreign consuls, especially British consul Longworth, the truce was agreed and signed by Аšir-paša and the minister Garašanin, as well as the representatives of the foreign countries.

The Turks agreed to entrust some of the towns to the Duke Mihailo, first Belgrade, then Fetislav (Kladovo), Smederevo and Šabac, and then many other. In 1867, the Duke Mihailo obtained the keys of the Belgrade fortress, and the ceremony was held on 6 April on the Kalemegdan. Along with many similarities between the eyewitnesses' testimonies, there are also many disagreements, which later on led to the misinterpretations and modifications of the event. The event near the Čukur Fountain is seen as one of the most important events in the history of Belgrade.

The history of the monument

One of the Belgrade citizens of that time who is responsible for marking the very spot in order to save the event at the Čukur Fountain from the oblivion was a famous tobacconist Vanđel Toma He left by will a large sum of money to erect the monument. The design for the bronze sculpture on the marble pedestal was done by Simeon Roksandić, one of the most famous sculptors of the realism movement in Serbian Art. The following words are written on the monument:

"IN THE MEMORY OF THE EVENTS OF 26 May
IN 1862,
AT ČUKUR FOUNTAIN,
THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED AS THE LEGACY OF VANĐEL TOMA
IN 1931."

All the sources state 15 June 1862 (to the new calendar 3 June according to the old one), and not 26 May. It is not known who and why changed the date.

The first tender for the monument was opened in 1912. There is little information about that tender, probably because of the spreading of the First World War, which disabled the building of the monument.

The new fountain with the sculpture on the top represents the young boy Sava, the apprentice killed on that very site. The thirteen-year-old boy Vlastimir Petković was the model for making the sculpture, and it was a mere coincidence that he had the same last name as the victim of the conflict in 1862. Roksandić submitted the design for the monument in 1927 to the art section of the Municipality of the City of Belgrade, which accepted the ideal solution, with just a slight remark concerning the architectural form of the monument. After consulting an architect Dubovy from the Technical Administration, he made a new sketch and sent it next year to the Municipality to evaluate it. The changes were accepted, the monument with the sculpture on the marble pedestal with a small pool, where the water from the pitcher flew, was connected to the water system and street sewage system. The little pool got a new, rounded look, and the marble bench was placed next to the fountain. It took three years since the handing over of the design and making the decision by the Municipality, so the monument was not built until 1931.

The expressed modelling, the expressive movement of a human body and the realistic expression of the lying figure of a boy with a pitcher in his hand keeps the legend about the young apprentice and the memory of the more recent history of Belgrade to the future generations. This monument was given the status of cultural monument in 1965, due to its artistic and historical values.

Literature

1. Vladimir Bubanjac, The Drinking Fountains in Belgrade, Belgrade, 1986, 27–39.
2. Jovan S.Dajković, Belgrade and the Čukur Fountain incident, GMGB, book IV, Belgrade 1957, 313–326.
3. Branislav Vučković, Čukur Fountain how was the present monument created, The heritage, IV, Belgrade, 2002.
4. I. Bećković, Čukur Fountain, The Cultural Heritage Protection Institute of the City of Belgrade, Belgrade, 2009.