Sept 14 - This morning take a walk around more of the old city walls. Just away from the sculped riverside pedestrian zone, it gets a bit grittier and down-to-business. The avenues are crowded with numerous small shops (no chain stores like in downtown), and street hawkers set up on the cracked pavement. One block has (invariably) old ladies, wrapped in shawls, selling plants, potted in glass jars or aluminum cans. Fruit, kitchenware, and other household knick-knacks also feature as themes for other sellers. All of this going on at the base of the old walls, which gives me the feeling that maybe a market in this spot has been going on for at least 400 years.
For today’s urban hiking adventure, head south east along the main road of Niš.
So, Skull Tower has a rather grim history. By the beginning of the 19th Century, Serbian nationalists were rising against Ottoman rule. The first official Serbian Uprising was in 1809, and one of the famous clashes of that period was the Battle of Čegar, held near Niš. The Serbian nationalists were being overwhelmed by the number of Ottoman soldiers attacking their defensive position. Rather than surrendering to what they determined would be a gruesome, drawn-out execution, the leader, Stevan Sinđelić, ignited the gunpowder stores in the trench and blew up himself, the other Serbs, and a number of attacking Ottoman troops.
After the battle, the Ottomans collected all the heads of the Serbs they could find, and built a tower, setting a total of 952 skulls in a mix of sand and limestone around the edges. Actually it was more complicated than that! First, they skinned the heads, then packed them all off to Constantinople, where the Sultan took a look, decided ‘this is good’, and sent them back to Niš with instructions to make a tower of them. Perhaps a perfect example of what was wrong with the priorities the Ottoman Empire near its decrepit end.
