Trg Slobode

Introduction

Freedom Square is the point of origin of Novi Sad and the most concentrated stretch of facade in a city often called the Athens of Serbia. The square dates to the eighteenth century, with the buildings around it concentrated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so what you see is really an ensemble of Austro-Hungarian public buildings rather than a planned civic space. Its name changed with politics: first for Emperor Franz Joseph, later Revolution Square, now Freedom Square. The two buildings worth most attention were designed by the same architect, Gyorgy Molnar. On the east side, the Church of the Name of Mary was begun in 1892 and completed in 1895, a Neo-Gothic three-nave basilica with a tower about 72 metres tall, the highest church in Backa. Its steep roof is laid with Hungarian Zsolnay ceramics, and its twenty stained-glass windows were largely donated by wealthy local families and priests, with the benefactors themselves painted at the bottom of the panes. The main altar was carved by Tyrolean craftsmen, and the organ has 24 registers. Because of its size locals simply call it the Cathedral, although the actual diocesan seat is in Subotica. Directly opposite stands the City Hall, completed in 1895 in a Neo-Renaissance idiom, with Ionic and Corinthian columns on the facade and sixteen allegorical plaster statues of different professions by Julije Anika. In the tower hangs the bell of St Florian, known as Matilda, donated to the volunteer fire brigade and used to signal the location of fires by the number of its tolls. In the middle of the square is the seven-metre bronze monument to Svetozar Miletic by Ivan Mestrovic on a marble base. It was hidden by citizens in 1941 to keep the occupying forces from removing it, and returned to its place after the liberation in 1944, a detail almost nobody mentions. On the north side, the Vojvodjanska Banka building of 1907 is Hungarian Secession, and it was here that the Great National Assembly proclaimed Vojvodina's union with Serbia in 1918; next to it stands the Ironman Palace, named for the helmeted figure on its roof. On the south side, Hotel Vojvodina opened in 1854 and was for a time the first establishment in the area to offer hot and cold water. From the church, Zmaj Jovina Street runs east to the Orthodox bishop's palace.

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