Čukur Fountain

Čukur Fountain (Serbian: Čukur česma) is a memorial located in Dobračina Street in Belgrade. The fountain features a bronze sculpture of an apprentice boy who was killed, titled ‘The Boy with a Broken Pitcher’. The memorial was erected in 1931 from an endowment fund established by a tobacco merchant named Toma Vanđel in his will. The design for the bronze sculpture on a marble pedestal was done by Simeon Roksandić, a sculptor of the Serbian Realist movement. This is a monument built to commemorate the Čukur Fountain incident of 15 June 1862, which started with the death of a boy, Savo Petković, and grew into a conflict between Serbia and the Ottoman Empire (Serbia being under Ottoman sovereignty at that time). On February 5 1965 the fountain was declared a cultural landmark. In May 2010, vandals stole the sculpture of the boy, banged it with a hammer and sold it to the owner of an unauthorized dump in Krnjača for 20 thousand RSD. The sculpture was broken into 22 pieces but was ultimately repaired. The reconstruction took three months to complete.