page_title: Peter I of Serbia
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Peter I of Serbia / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Skopje, Macedonia
context_page_description: Peter I reigned as the last King of Serbia and as the first King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Since he was the king of Serbia during a period of great Serbian military success, he was remembered by the Serbian people as King Peter the Liberator, and also known as Old King.
  Peter was Karađorđe's grandson and third son of Persida Nenadović and Prince Alexander Karađorđević, who was forced to abdicate. Peter lived with his family in exile. He fought with the French Foreign Legion in the Franco-Prussian War. He joined as volunteer under the alias Peter Mrkonjić in the Herzegovina Uprising against the Ottoman Empire.
  He married Princess Zorka of Montenegro, daughter of King Nicholas, in 1883. She gave birth to his five children, including Prince Alexander. After the death of his father in 1885, Peter became head of the Karađorđević dynasty. After a military coup d'état and the murder of King Alexander I Obrenović in 1903, Peter became King of Serbia.
  As king, he advocated a constitutional setup for the country and was famous for his libertarian politics.
context_section_description: Three cities in interwar Yugoslavia were named after King Peter I: Mrkonjić Grad in Bosnia-Herzegovina (former Varcar Vakuf), Petrovgrad in Vojvodina (Veliki Bečkerek, now Zrenjanin) and Petrovac na Moru (former Kaštel Lastva) in Montenegro. Dozens of monuments erected in his honor throughout Yugoslavia were destroyed after the communist takeover in 1945. Only one monument, in Zrenjanin (former Petrovgrad) was recently restored, as well as several smaller monuments in Belgrade and the rest of Serbia. The other monuments in honor to King Peter I were restored or erected in Republika Srpska, in Bosnia and Herzegovina where his cult status as a national hero is as strong as it is in Serbia.
  In Paris, an avenue off the Champs-Élysées is named after him, Avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie. There is a modest monument dedicated to King Peter I of Serbia in Orléans, France, when he fought as a volunteer in the French army. A large monument to King Peter and his son Alexander I of Yugoslavia was also unveiled in 1936, at the Porte de la Muette in Paris. The film King Peter I was released in early December 2018 starring Lazar Ristovski as King Peter.
caption: Former monument to Peter I at the Macedonia Square in Skopje
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "600", "Image YResolution": "600", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Windows", "Image DateTime": "2006:01:06 09:46:41", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5163", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "800", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "522"}