History
Zeleni Venac is built in the area that was previously part of the trench which surrounded the Kalemegdan fortress in the 18th century. When the trench was covered, a pond was formed. As the Belgrade grew around it, the pond became popular hunting attraction (for fowls, ducks, etc.) for the inhabitants of Belgrade. In the middle of the 19th century, the pond was partially drained as a designated area for the future National Theatre, but the area proved to be unstable and after the foundations were laid down, the idea was abandoned and the theater was constructed on another site. The completely forgotten foundation were rediscovered during the 2005/06 reconstruction of Zeleni Venac. In the early 20th century the pond was drained completely.
The name of the neighborhood means the green wreath. Venac is usually used in Belgrade's geography in term of a round street (Obilićev Venac, Kosančićev Venac) or a rim of the river (Savski Venac, Dunavski Venac). However, in this case, it is used in the word's initial usage, meaning wreath. On the location of the present McDonald's restaurant in the Brankova street, for decades was located kafana Zeleni venac whose logo was a green wreath. Belgrade historians still debate whether the neighborhood was named after the kafana or the opposite.
Read more about this topic: Zeleni Venac
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)