Trg vladike Nikolaja 3

One-story residential-business building, built on the corner of Beogradska Street and Vladika Nikolaja Square. According to historical sources, this house housed the main mortar shop where the “mortar tax” was charged, i.e. the bridge toll for crossing the pontoon bridge. The base of the house is rectangular with a small inner courtyard. The entrance corridor from the square area is placed centrally and vaulted with a semi-shaped vault with vaulted branches.

On the left side are the entrances to the apartments and the staircase to the first floor, on the right side is the office space and the inner courtyard. The staircase is two-legged with wooden treads. Traces of the characteristic stucco decoration have been preserved on the shallow segmental and spherical vaults. The rooms on the ground floor and basement are under semi-circular vaults, on the first floor with flat ceilings. The basement is located under the street part of the building and part of the yard, it is covered with rubble and inaccessible. The roof is high, on two sides, covered with pepper tiles, with two preserved massive chimneys.

Both street facades are solved symmetrically, flatly plastered with an accented attic and mezzanine cornice. The corner verticals and the central axes of the openings are emphasized by shallow pilasters with characteristic shallow plastic curvilinear ends, executed in plaster, such as we find on the house at Beogradska 11. All openings are in a simple plaster frame of an accented salt bank with shallow ornamentation in the fields above the openings and in the parapets, as and under the attic cornice. At the level of the first floor from Beogradska Street, there is a rectangular semicircular niche with a baroque sculpture of St. Anthony of Padua with little Christ.

On each side of the pedestal on which the sculpture is placed are decorations in the form of a flame. In the same position on the facade facing the square, there is an identical niche from which the sculpture was removed. The ground floor area has undergone changes in previous adaptations, while the upper floor area has preserved the original appearance of the building. The courtyard facades were significantly changed by the additions, the former communication balcony on the first floor was walled up and added, new windows of inappropriate dimensions were installed, and the large arched opening between the corridor and the courtyard is supported by a new concrete column in the middle of the span.
The overall appearance of the building, the characteristic profiling and ornamentation in the plaster, the shaping of specific details, as well as the applied constructive solutions point to the second half of the 18th century, as the time of the building’s creation.

The realisation of this site was supported by the Administration for Culture of the City of Novi Sad

The sources and materials of the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Novi Sad were used for the realization of this website

The Old Core of Novi Sad was declared a cultural asset, by the decision on establishing it as a spatial cultural-historical unit – 05 no. 633-151/2008 of January 17, 2008, “Sl. gazette of the Republic of Serbia” no. 07/2008.