I am not religious and I have a thing or two to say about the existence of religions (or to be more precise, their physical representation) as we have them today, but I still am a great admirer of religious architecture if I can call it that. 

By this, of course, I mean the temples of worship, the most common being churches/monasteries, synagogues and mosques. And while we have a bunch of the former in Belgrade, of the second and third we only have one of each! Which is such a pity, because their architecture is usually so amazing. 

And that’s why the only active mosque left in Belgrade — The Bajrakli Mosque — is a gem we should cherish. Once upon a time, there were 273 mosques in Belgrade (while this area was under the rule of Ottoman Empire, go figure), but as it usually goes, humans usually want to destroy all physical evidence of things they don’t want to remember, and because of that and a bunch of other reasons it is a pleasant surprise that this little mosque, built in 1575 and now surrounded by other buildings that barely let her breathe and make her less visible, has survived to this day. 

And to any building that survives this long in Belgrade, I bow down. Hold on there!