Ruski car Tavern

"Ruski car" tavern is on the corner of 7 Knez Mihailova Street and 29 Obilićev Venac Streets, Belgrade, and has the status of the cultural property.

The building was built between 1922 and 1926 after the design of the architect Petar Popović, and with the assistance of the architect Dragiša Brašovan in the development of the project. As a whole, the building has characteristics of academic mannerism and represents a typical building erected in the city centre in order to be "rented". The decorations bear elements of neo-baroque in the design of the corner dome, whereas the corpus of the building is much closer to the academic variant of Art Nouveau.

The purpose of the building has not significantly changed since the erection up to now: the residential area is on the upper floors, the business space in the mezzanine and the restaurant on the ground floor and in the basement. Its name „Ruski car“ is related to the old ground floor building, which existed on the same site until the erection of the new structure in 1926. The original interior of the tavern was changed during the reconstruction done at the beginning of 1960s, when the first self-service restaurant „Zagreb“ was opened.

The name Ruski car originates from around 1900, when the Russian tsar was supposed to be a godfather to king Aleksandar I Obrenović. In the period between the two wars, this tavern was an elegant Belgrade restaurant, the meeting place for both noble citizens and the intellectual elite of that time. The meetings of Serbian engineers and architects were held in the tavern Ruski car before and after the First World War.