Tablja: The Tower Njegoš Never Finished

In 1833 Petar II Petrović Njegoš — prince-bishop, poet, and the closest thing nineteenth-century Montenegro had to a state — built a round tower on the rise above Cetinje Monastery. It was to be the last defensive point of the capital, holding twenty-four guards and their cannon.

It was never completely finished, and it never fought. What it actually did, for most of its life, was fire ceremonial salutes when important visitors arrived. That is a fair summary of Cetinje's whole position in the period: a capital that was mostly symbol, defended by a tower that was mostly gesture.

The ground beneath it is older than either. A fortified settlement is presumed to have stood on this rise as early as the sixth century, which puts the Tablja in the same category as almost everything else in this series — the newest object on a hill that people have been climbing for defensive reasons for well over a thousand years.

There is no way to write about the Tablja without this. Until 1850, the severed heads of Ottoman enemies were displayed on the tower as war trophies.

It is stated plainly in Cetinje's own tourism material, and it belongs in any honest account of the building. This was the practice of a small mountain polity in near-permanent war with a vastly larger empire, and it was not unique to one side of that war — but it happened here, on this tower, within living memory of people whose grandchildren saw it demolished.

The practice stopped in 1850. The tower then became a bell tower, carrying a bell of 1,631.5 kilograms donated by Laza Urošević of Zemun, rung for religious holidays and to honour distinguished guests. The same structure, in the space of a generation, went from displaying heads to ringing for Easter.

The Tablja was pulled down in 1938, during the levelling of a plateau intended for the construction of a new cathedral church. A simpler belfry on four pillars was afterwards built from the material that remained.

Some accounts give 1937 rather than 1938, and some attribute the demolition to a political motive — that the tower was too strong a symbol of Montenegrin identity to be left standing. Cetinje's own account gives 1938 and a civic reason: they needed the ground. Both readings circulate; only one of them is documented, and this article uses that one while noting the other exists.

What is not in dispute is the outcome. Of the ten fortifications in this series, two are gone: the Citadela at Herceg Novi, taken by an earthquake in ninety seconds, and the Tablja, taken by a works crew over rather longer. One of those two was somebody's decision.