New founding on the fortress of Kalemegdan - the secret chamber

Working on the southeast rampart of Kalemegdan has brought another founding which, after further archaeological researech, could become atractive for the visitors of the fortress. The workers noticed a slit on the structure of the rampart, and later they found out that a wide underground chamber is under that slit. 24 years ago, archaeologists have noticed a slit on therampart that was torn down in the bobmbing in 1941, but the slit wasn't investigated untill today.

- The chamber is about 10m long and about 6m wide. It spreads toward the Upper town. It is built out of bricks, with a semicircular vault which is about 4m high. It still unclear what it was there for, or where the entrance might be because the slit wasn't an entrance; it might have been a ventilation slit . The rest of the schamber, towards the place where the entrance could be is covered with a 5m layer of filth - explains professor Marko Popović from the Instute for archaeology SANU.

The inner space shows that it was covered during the Austro - Hungaria reign, between 1717 and 1739. The fact that it is in the structure of the souteastern rampat, which was built between 1693 and 1722 on the place of an old midlleage rampat, shows that the chamber must have been built between 1717 an 1722. That is the same period when it was covered. As dr Popović says, it is still unclear what the reason could be for it to be covered in a such short period. One of the assumptions is that it happend spontaneous or that the rampat fell in.

If we get the money to continue our research, the first thing to do would be finding the entrance and to see if there are any other chambers like it. Anyway, it is a very interesting finding which is compleatly new to us - says dr Popović an adds that the new foundings wouldn't have only scientific, but touristic value too.

He points out that the existence of this chamber isn't in any of the historical documents or on any old map of the fortress of Kalemegdan.