Origin First houses in the vicinity of the area were built in c.1717. The area was mostly empty
heath, stretching between the city's outer gates and the village of Palilula. First settlement in the zone of the modern street was recorded c.1825. This area, the Danube slope, unlike the Sava slope where
Savamala is located, was settled spontaneously. The proper history of Skadarlija began in 1830 with the settlement of
Gypsies in the abandoned trenches in front of the
ramparts. As the expansion was not planned, the settlers buried the trench, and adapted the area, as they liked. At the time, Belgrade was divided into quarters, and the stream was an administrative border between the quarters of
Palilula and Dorćol (Stari Grad). As Palilula limited the playing of music to midnight, people would then jump across the stream in the Dorćol section to continue with festivities. The name was shortly changed to Ružina Street, though, during World War I by the occupational Austro-Hungarian administration, but never by the Belgrade administration. 1872 is also the year when a "modern" urban development of the street began, because this is when the first urban plans for the streets were made. As of 2022, the
Tri šešira, founded in 1864, is the oldest, still operational kafana in Skadarlija and second overall in Belgrade, after the
?. With other kafanas being closed or relocated to Skadarlija, and closing of the most popular "Velika Srbija" inn in 1905 to make place for the
Hotel Moskva in
Terazije, by c.1910 Skadarlija became to central point of Belgrade's bohemianism. The brewery was originally established in 1850 by Filip Đorđević. He previously purchased the equipment from the failed brewery of Czech migrant and miller expert Johan Weinhappl founded in 1839, and installed it in the ending section of the Cetinjska Street, which forms the atrium with Skadarlija. The manually operated brewery became known as Little Brewery, to distinguish it from the Big Brewery, opened by the royal family in
Savamala in 1840. It was purchased by the Bajloni family in 1880, who introduced the steam machines. It produced "Aleksandar" beer, made from thermal waters that spring out in the brewery's backyard. When Bajloni began digging for the foundations of his brewery in 1892, he discovered the bones of the mammoths and skulls of the Neanderthal
Krapina man, The houses in the street were small, with mud plastered walls and roofs covered with flat tiles (). The houses had small yards with gardens and water taps and wooden,
plank fences (). Only occasional houses had a porch. By the 1930s, many survived while smaller number of houses was demolished and the new buildings were built instead. The street itself was paved with the rough, lumpy cobblestones.
20th-century revitalization By the end of World War II, Skadarlija was in bad shape. At one point, not counting two buffets at the beginning and the end of the street, "Split" and "Skadar", only three kafanas survived: "(Velika) Skadarlija", "Dva jelena" and "Tri šešira". Other venues were closed due to the nationalization, lack of professional staff, rationed food and drinks, and the general state of adversity after the war. State organized "administrative provisioning" for kafanas, in case of Skadarlija and the entire Belgrade's First
Raion (modern Stari Grad municipality), from the central storage facility in the Vlajkovićeva Street. Thus, even those kafanas which worked, had no permanent menus, as they never knew what groceries will be delivered. After the first signs of economic recovery, Hospitality Secretariat of the First Raion decided to revitalize Skadarlija's kafanas in 1952. Works started first in "Skadarlija" in 1953, which was reopened on 31 December 1953. New Year's Eve celebration was attended by the members of the new, Communist elite, including president
Josip Broz Tito and the first lady
Jovanka Broz. Urban story claims that the idea of transforming the street into what it is today came in c.1957, during the mulled beer drinking contest between the poet , and writer and artist
Zuko Džumhur in "Tri šešira". Plans for further adaptations were made in 1977 but remained on paper until 2008. Restaurant "Ima dana" was opened in 1969. One of the first modern clubs in the neighborhood was "Monokl", opened across the "Tri šešira" in the 1970s. Famous folk singer
Silvana Armenulić performed at the opening. DJ was
Maksa Ćatović, who was previously a disc jockey in "Cepelin" in
Tašmajdan. In 1985 theatre director
Zorica Jevremović Munitić founded Children's Street Theater /Ulično dečje pozorište/ in Skadarlija. The core of the troupe was made up of Romany children who lived in Skadarlija, 'white' children' from Dorcol (a nearby prestigious Belgrade neighborhood), Romany children from the favelas of the Belgrade suburb of Mirijevo (who sell flowers in Skadarlija), professional actors and painters who live in Skadarlija, a Skadarlija fortune-teller, clowns, fire eaters, and alternative artists (musicians, painters). The house of
Đura Jakšić, a well-known writer and painter who lived and died in Skadarlija, has been turned into a meeting place for the poets participating in the Skadarlija Evenings event, after it was fully renovated in 1986. It became the cultural center of the quarter. Works are scheduled to begin in September 2008 and due to be finished by December 2010. A new multi-functional center will include two hotels, subterranean garage, restaurants, museum and a new pedestrian zone comprising a wide promenade between the
Skadarska and
Cetinjska streets. The restaurant
Stara Skadarlija, two authentic walls of the brewery, the old tower and shopping mall, boiler room and
lagums will be preserved but with additional functions. The tower will be illuminated and visible from the city neighborhoods below. The shopping mall's higher floors will be turned into a hotel. Lagums will be open for the public and turned into souvenir and gift shops. The atrium will be turned into a new commercial shopping mall and a hotel with subterranean garage of parking spaces. Water springs will be co-opted and protected, and new drills will be added to the existing three springs, as a sort of a tourist attraction. The most controversial aspect at the moment appears to be the concept of a glass box-shaped membrane, lit from the inside, which is supposed to engulf the
Stara Skadarlija restaurant. The idea is opposed by the local population. Except for
Stara Skadarlija, changes will mainly occur in the side from the
Cetinjska street which is considered a low preservation urban area, unlike the Skadarlija side, which is protected by the law and no new construction works will be allowed. As the altitude difference from top to bottom of the projected area is , it is
de facto going to be step-like dug into the ground for almost three floors. The project was scrapped in the later years due to the unsolved property ownership issues,
2017–2021 reconstruction Instead, reconstruction of the street was announced by the city government in October 2016, as the cobblestones and the façades became damaged in time. Works were scheduled for the spring of 2017, but were moved to October 2017, The fountain was restored according to the original 1966 project of Bogunović and Ribnikar, and the works were finished on 7 July 2017, 10 days ahead of the schedule. The stone fountain, which was built on the location of an old, one-pipe fountain from the
Ottoman period, was fully renovated and the stone bench made of the yellow
Ljig sandstone, which was projected in 1966, was finally built. Further reconstruction began on 16 October 2017 and was projected to last until the spring of 2018. In November 2017 photos appeared showing that the trademark stone
kaldrma has been removed and that street was paved with the
asphalt concrete. It prompted a major public outburst and protests, so the city authorities explained that the asphalt is just the substrate and that stones will be washed and placed on top of the asphalt. As the works were under the tougher public scrutiny since then, it was obvious that the old stone was replaced with the new, imported one, produced in Greece in 2016. City then announced that the old and new stones will be mixed, but instead of a colorful stones of the old
kaldrma, the new one is uniformly gray, described as the "dark shroud, in contrast to the previous playful and diverse one, which took [from Skadarlija] its joy and vibrancy and killed its Dionysian spirit". In the lower half, which was done by December, only the new stones were used. The customs paper show that the stone was imported only after the asphalt pavement was finished and public protests. The reconstruction was halted again in the spring of 2018 because of the opening of the touristic season, and was continued in October 2018. Deadline for this phase was mid-December 2018, but when deadline approached, it was obvious that the works are not going to be finished. Despite holiday season, the works left majority of the quarter even without the basic, street lights. Additionally, works on almost all cross streets began in April and were to be finished by October, but that wasn't finished either, so the association of the local restaurant and café owners again reported declining income due to the dug streets. They negotiated with the city administration a temporary halt of the works during winter holidays. By September 2019, less than a year since the works were finished, the street was clearly disintegrating, showing the low quality of works and imported Greek stone. After both traditional and social media reported this, despite deputy mayor Goran Vesić stated in March 2018 that the final, third phase starts in October 2018, city now claims that the entire reconstruction will have phases 4 and 5, though they were not mentioned before and nothing is known about them. The works were never finished and by December 2020 the street deteriorated even more, including the newly renovated parts, and was described as the "extreme sports training ground". The street was dug out again in January 2021, with claims that this is the ending phase, which will be finished by May/June 2021. By this time, journalists reported it is unknown what was planned, how much has been done, what was included later, how many "final phases" there are, and that there is no end in the foreseeable future. Daily
Politika's journalist and Belgrade chronicler Milan Janković ironically wrote:
Please stop, we beg you. Leave Skadarlija to be ugly and unacceptable as it has always been, because since you started to "fix" it, it is much worse. Or the Skadarlija experiment will continue? In October 2021, city's monuments commission adopted a motion to build a monument to singer
Toma Zdravković, at No. 26. The motion, proposed by
Rasim Ljajić, was accepted by the
city assembly on 20 June 2023, but at No. 28. The lifesize monument, sculptured by Katarina Tripković, was ceremonially unveiled on 2 October 2023 by Ljajić and mayor
Aleksandar Šapić. == Characteristics ==