page_title: St. Mark's Church, Belgrade
section_title: New church
hierarchical_section_title: St. Mark's Church, Belgrade / History / New church
caption_attribution_description: English: Saint Mark church
context_page_description: St. Mark's Church or Church of St. Mark is a Serbian Orthodox church located in the Tašmajdan park in Belgrade, Serbia, near the Parliament of Serbia. It was built in the Serbo-Byzantine style by the Krstić brothers, completed in 1940, on the site of a previous church dating to 1835. It is one of the largest churches in the country. There is a small Russian church next to St. Mark's.
context_section_description: Due to the rapid growth of the city and population increase, it became necessary in the beginning of the 20th century to build a larger church in the Belgrade quarter of Palilula. Frequent wars did not allow this until 1930 when a pair of Belgrade architects, the brothers Petar and Branko Krstić, both professors of the University of Belgrade Faculty of Architecture, designed the plans for the new St. Mark's Church. The present building of St. Mark's Church was built according to their drawings between 1931 and 1940. The eruption of World War II interrupted the full completion of the church. Only the construction work was finished. Divine service took place in the new church during the war in 1941 and after it until November 14, 1948 in the adapted narthex of the church. On that date the church was consecrated (by Serbian Patriarch Gavrilo V) and the church opened for divine service. There were plans to decorate the whole interior with frescoes. The external walls are in two colors of natural materials in the Serbo-Byzantine style. The church bell tower is a part of the church itself on the west side.
  Due to the already urbanized area around it, the construction couldn't follow the strict church canon concerning the east-west position. In order to fit into the existing city grid, Serbian Patriarch Varnava gave a special permit for the new church to deviate for 10 degrees from the canonical rule. That way, the main entrance came in line with the Resavska Street, across it.
  The Gračanica Monastery was used as a model for the new church. Until the Church of Saint Sava surpassed it, St.Mark's Church was the largest Serbian church. It is considered one of the most beautiful edifices of the sacral architecture in the Serbo-Byzantine Revival style.
  The Anniversary Day of Operation Storm, held for mourning killed and exiled Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, is held on August 5 in St. Mark's Church.
  The interiors of the church cover 1,150 m² (12,400 sq ft). The naos can receive 2,000 people and the choir gallery can accommodate 150 musicians. The church is 62 m (203 ft) long, 45 m (148 ft) wide and 60 m (200 ft) high, excluding the cross.
  In November 2017 a complete rearrangement of the plateau, which functioned as an extension of the Tašmajdan Park in front of the church, began. Old asphalt pavement which served as a parking lot was removed. Architect Jovan Mitrović designed a new, leveled combination of granite slabs and green areas. The plateau will be divided in two sections, left and right, divided by the green island. The right, "ceremonial" side will be regularly shaped, with the granite slabs posted in the horizontal rhythm, interrupted with the thin squares of red Italian granite. The design is patterned after the façade of the Michelangelo's temples on Capitoline Hill in Rome. The idea is to visually expand the church. The left side will have "disheveled" pattern, made of differently sized and combined granite slabs. The plateau was finished in February 2018.
  In June 2018 it was announced that a monument to Patriarch Pavle, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church from 1990 to 2009, will be erected on the green area between the newly finished plateau and the tram stop in Tašmajdan Park. The  1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) tall bronze monument was authored by Zoran Maleš. It was placed in the park on 13 November 2018 and dedicated on 15 November, an anniversary of Pavle's death.
caption: Iconostasis.
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