Oplenac Church

About

King Peter I personally selected Oplanec’s hill-top location upon his ascension in 1903. After a 7-year design-vetting process, construction began in 1910, and the church was consecrated in 1912. Following the Balkan War, plans were made to enscribe the names of all the fallen soldiers on the walls of the church’s interior, but the idea had to be abandoned due to the start of the World War I. Instead, 725 classic Serbian fresco designs are rendered in 40 million pieces of glass in 15 thousand varieties of color are within the church’s white marble facade. The center of the huge bronze chandelier is the Serbian crown, flipped upside down to symbolize the loss of the Serbian Empire in the Battle of Kosovo. With so much detail, entire day could be spent studying the intricacies of the interior.