Observation Post of the Serbian Army High Command on Kajmakčalan

Simić drained the swamps, filled up and levelled the terrain, and on the odd-numbered side of the present Kralja Milana Street, he erected the house in the period from 1840–1842, which was later on named Stari konak.

Within the transformation of the court complex in the last decades of the 19th century, thanks to King Milan Obrenović's commitment, the decoration of the garden was continued by planting the exotic trees, some of which are preserved until today.

During the garden decoration, the English landscape – free style was applied in Serbia for the first time, conditioned with the existing vegetation in that area.

One of the most important projects of this reconstruction was orienting the former court complex towards the National Assembly building, thus realizing the idea about the forming of the representative administrative centre.

Pyramidal form made of rustically processed stone in the Pioneers` park in Belgrade, based on its widely spread belief, represents the replica of the observation post of the Serbian Army from Kajmakčalan, from the Salonika front[2] that is, the observation post of the High Command of the Serbian Army from the Salonika front, which was located on Jelak, on the Moglen mountain, from where the regent Aleksandar Karađorđević and the commander in chief Živojin Mišić and the members of his headquarters watched the battle on the day of the breakthrough of the Salonika front, on 15 September 1918.

There are other records too, which identify this structure as the imitation of the Grotto cave, built during the reign of King Milan Obrenović, which served in a decorative purpose.

The data about the existence of the observation post from the Salonika front [3] in the Pioneers` park in Belgrade appears in the daily paper Politika, from 5 November 1983.

In his letter to the Republic Cultural Heritage Protection Institute, professor Tešić mentioned as the source that during 1935 he was listening to the lectures „The History of Wars“, where colonel Jeremija Stanojević said that „the observation post of the High Command of Serbian Army on Jelak was soon after the First World war moved to Belgrade and that later on, during his military service, as an officer in the Guard from 1936 to 1941 he heard that information from the senior officers.

Trying to clarify the origin of this object, and in order to find the documented material related to the observation post, The Cultural Heritage Protection Institute of the City of Belgrade conducted extensive researches during 1988/1989.