Niš’s Icarus Monument: Planes, Balloons and Pigeons

Ninety years on

In 2002, for the ninetieth anniversary, a monument to Serbian military aviation was unveiled in Niš. It stands in a small park on Mija Stanimirović Square, in front of the Court of Appeal.

A tall white pillar rises from the paving, with a crowned coat of arms near its foot. At the top, a bronze man holds a wing in each fist. He is Icarus.

When I took these photos in September 2023, the white surface of the pillar was flaking and stained. The following month, the monument was restored.

Daedalus’s son

In the Greek myth, Daedalus made wings of feathers and wax so that he and his son, Icarus, could escape from Crete. Icarus flew too close to the sun. The wax melted, and he fell into the sea.

This is the figure chosen to mark ninety years of military flying.

The monument is also dedicated to all fallen pilots. The first Serbian military pilot to be killed was Mihajlo Petrović, who had trained on the field at Trupale. In March 1913, less than three months after Putnik signed the order, he fell from his aeroplane while returning from a reconnaissance flight over Shkodër, in what is now Albania.

The original

The Icarus in Niš is a bronze copy, made by the sculptor Vladan Ašanin. The original, in stone, has been on the Air Force Command building in Zemun, in Belgrade, since 1938. The sculptor Zlata Markov-Baranji made it with her husband, Karlo.

In 1999, during the NATO bombing, the building was hit and its windows were broken. The stone Icarus was not damaged.