Before it was demolished to make room for the new building, Patriarch Varnava commissioned the painter Kosta Hakman to paint the edifice.

Popular myth at the time claimed that in the kitchen object, the severed head of Karađorđe was kept in 1817, before Miloš Obrenović sent it to Istanbul.

Additionally, the old Metropolis building was in bad shape anyway so it got a priority and was to serve as the temporary seat of the church until the project on Savinac is finished.

They were dug on the orders from Prince Miloš, so that he could meet with the leaders of the church, unbeknownst to the Ottomans who ruled Serbia at the time.

Modernist influence of the day is evident in the simple and neutral surface of the façade and characteristic rectangular windows on the highest floor of the side wings.

Due to the significant decline of the terrain, as the entire neighborhood of Kosančićev Venac is on the mass-wasting prone slope of the Sava river, the edifice has an uneven number of floors on the lateral, lengthwise sides.

The basement and the ground floor are reserved for the various institutes of the Serbian Orthodox Church, offices, archives and the premises of the Spiritual Court.

The front façade, facing the Cathedral Church, is marked by the massive portico with the decorated and arch-like portal.

The portal's prominence is accentuated by the characteristic, deformed short columns, which are a common and recognizable motif of the church architecture projected by the Russian émigré architects.

On the upper section of the front façade, in the niche above the portal, there is a large, elongated mosaic representing John the Baptist.

[1] When finished, the building was praised, both by public and the press, which described it as an "imposing, magnificent edifice" and that its "simplified Neo-Byzantine style fits into the sacral area of Belgrade".

Bulk of the exhibits comes from the churches and monasteries in Syrmia and Fruška Gora which were looted by the Ustaše during the World War II.

The most valuable artifacts include the rich collection of Byzantine-style icons from the period of Ottoman rule, the robe of Prince Lazar with his heraldic mark on the buttons (a helmet with the ox horns), the shroud of King Milutin and a glass donated to the Mileševa monastery by Ivan the Terrible in 1558 (his grandmother was Serbian noble Ana Jakšić).