SKULL TOWER

The Skull Tower is a stone monument, embedded with human skulls that was constructed by soldiers of the Ottoman Empire after the Battle of Cegar in 1809.
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The Battle of Cegar, (also called the Battle of Kamenica) was a conflict during the First Serbian Uprising in the Sanjak of Smederevo (an Ottoman administrative division) between the Serbian Revolutionaries and Ottoman forces on Cegar hill near the city of Nis in Serbia.
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Before the battle, the Serbian Revolutionaries had constructed six large defensive positions to force the Ottoman’s defending from the Nis fortress to capitulate, but the Ottoman’s used the negotiations to delay the conflict in time for 20,000 reinforcements from Rumelia.
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The battle lasted a whole day, with fierce hand-to-hand fighting resulting in thousands of losses on both sides and concluding in the Serbian Revolutionaries being forced to retreat in defeat to the town of Deligrad.
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As a warning to further revolutionaries in the region, the Ottomans collected the heads from the Serbian dead and peeled off the skin.

The heads were stuffed with straw and sent to the Ottoman sultan, Mahmud II at the Imperial Palace in Istanbul to celebrate the victory.
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