Recycling project: New/old tunnel near Kalemegdan

Since the digging of the subway will not happen soon, only the fountain and the cascading unevenness of the terrain towards the Great Stairs remain of the old solution.

Yesterday, the public was informed about the new/old project of the traffic tunnel in Fransuka Street, i.e. connecting the pedestrian zone of Knez Mihailova Street with Kalemegdan. On that occasion, the mayor of Belgrade drew attention to the fact that it is a project from 2012, which will soon be activated, apparently not knowing the history of this idea and location.

This idea is designed more than four decades ago, but now, as well as in 2012, its real author is not mentioned anywhere in public. If it weren’t for the author’s own reply, which was a response to the first article in Politika, the public wouldn’t even know where the idea to dig a tunnel came from, that is. extend the pedestrian zone.

A solution with a metro station

It turned out that the project from 2012, with all the fountain on the footbridge, presented by the then city architect Dejan Vasovicactually a pale copy of the architect’s original solution Branislav Jovin.

Architect Jovin, in the scope of the “Metro Belgrade” project, which was built from 1972 to 1982, on the site of the Kalemegdan Park predicted one of the metro stations. By extending the metro along the Kalemegdan-Slavija line, conditions would be created for a large pedestrian zone, and traffic conditions would be different, more precisely, some roads would end up underground.

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If it weren’t for the author’s retorts in Politika, the public wouldn’t know where the idea to dig a tunnel came from, that is. extend the pedestrian zone.

In 2012, the City of Belgrade recycled this project and presented it in a package of a large reconstruction of the Concrete Hall and its connection with the Belgrade Fortress. As this grandiose project never came to life, the digging of the tunnel in Pariska Street was also abandoned.

It seems that the project has again attracted the attention of the city leaders, of course not the original one, because the digging of the subway in the area of ​​the old city core will almost never happen, but this “recycled” one. with a fountain and a cascading leveling of the terrain towards the Great Stairs.

Routing underground

Let’s recall that there were several projects where a certain road was routed underground, in favor of a pedestrian zone or a park complex.

One of them is the first prize-winning urban planning solution of the architect Mihajlo Mitrović from the public tender from 1969, which foresees connecting the plateau of the Temple of Saint Sava with the park on the other side of JNA Boulevard (today Bulevar Oslobođenja), which the city government gave up when in 2003 it entrusted the reconstruction project of the Svetosava Plateau to the architectural team led by Đorđe Bobić and Dr. Vladimir Matsura. Even then, it was assessed that it was too expensive a project, that it should be reduced to the necessary framework, so only the space between the Temple and the City Library was treated.

Twin to Terazij tunnel and footbridge

The second project was a kind of “twin” to the Terazij tunnel, which would “dive” from Francaska Street under Republic Square and also emerged on Zeleni venc and Brankov Most.

There is, of course, a project that has been talked about for decades, which would connect the Sava and Danube slopes with two tunnels, but it cannot be realistically started from a standstill, as will be the case with the pedestrian footbridge project between Knez Mihailova Street and Kalemegdan. After more than a decade, the project was pompously announced, but everyone knows that nothing will come of it.