| At the end of the summer 1809, after the battle on Cegar Hill, the skulls of the killed Serbian soldiers were built in a tower, Skull Tower, on the way to Constantinople. It was done by order of Turkish pasha Hurshid, the brutal Turkish commander of the town of Nis at that time. Rectangular in its base, 3 meters high, Skull Tower was built out of 952 skulls of the Serbian heroes as a warning to the Serbian people. In 1833, on his way back from Constatinople, French poet Alphonse de Lamartine stopped for a moment in front of Skull Tower. He was shocked at the sight of it and wrote down in his book, later published as his travel accounts Journey to the East, the famous words: "My eyes and my heart greeted the remains of those brave men whose cut off heads made the corner stone of the independence of their homeland. May the Serbs keep this monument! It will always teach their children the value of the independence of a people, showing them the real price their fathers had to pay for it." In 1892, a chapel was built over the skulls which now protects 58 skulls left. Skull Tower represents a unique monument of this kind in the world, and it faithfully depicts the true nature of the Turkish crimes against the Serbian people. The place where Battle on Cegar Hill had happened was first marked on July 4, 1878 with the following inscription: "To voivoda Stevan Sindjelic and his undead heroes who lost their lives on May 19, 1809, in their attack on Nis. Knez Milan M. Obrenovic IV and his brave soldiers redeemed them on December 27, 1877 by conquering Nis." Today's monument in the shape of a tower - a symbol of the soldiers' fortification - was erected for the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Nis from the Turks, on June 1, 1927. In 1938 a bronze bust of Stevan Sindjelic was positioned in the semi-circle niche of the monument. |
 Skull Tower |
 Monument on Čegar Hill |
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