Belgrade`s naked `Victor` statue to be restored
(Artdaily.org)

Symbol of Belgrade, the `Pobednik` (Victor) statue, which has overlooked the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers since 1928, was taken down from the city`s Kalemegdan fortress Thursday to be restored. The naked man with a square jaw and martial gaze holds a dove in one hand and a sword in another, symbolising the complex past of the volatile Balkans region. Initially, Belgrade commissioned the statue from sculptor Ivan Mestrovic to mark the defeat of the Ottoman empire during the First Balkans War in 1912-13. An alliance of the region`s Slavs ended the five-century Ottoman domination, but Serbs and Bulgarians then fought each other over the spoils -- in the Second Balkans War. No sooner was that over when the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria sparked World War I. Mestrovic, who had begun building