Church of St. Archangel Michael, Belgrade

The Cathedral Church of Saint Michael the Archangel is a prominent Serbian Orthodox cathedral located in the old part of Belgrade, at the intersection of Kralja Petra and Kneza Sime Markovića streets. Constructed between 1837 and 1840 on the site of an older church dedicated to Archangel Michael, it stands as one of the most significant places of worship in Serbia and was declared a Cultural Monument of Exceptional Importance in 1979.

The church is one of the few remaining monuments in Belgrade from the first half of the 19th century, a period marked by the struggle for independence from Turkish centralism to final freedom from Ottoman rule. The original church on this site, described by Protestant priest and travel writer Stjepan Gerlach in the 16th century, was spacious but not large enough to accommodate all the Christian citizens of Belgrade.

The cathedral's construction features a single nave design with a semi-circular apse to the east and a narthex to the west, above which a high bell tower rises. The interior is divided into the altar space, nave, and narthex, which contains a baptistery and stairs leading to the bell tower. The architecture reflects neoclassical influences with a recognizable baroque tower, inspired by contemporaneous church designs in Austria and possibly modeled after the older cathedral church in Sremski Karlovci.

Dimitrije Petrović crafted the gold-plated carved iconostasis, while the distinguished 19th-century Serbian painter Dimitrije Avramović painted the icons and wall compositions between 1841 and 1845. Avramović's work, influenced by the historical school of Vienna and the German Nazarenes, features a dramatic color scheme and plastic-dramatic rhythm that create a unique Serbian manner. His monumental religious compositions are highly regarded in Serbian art history.

The cathedral also houses a valuable treasury containing applied art objects, including golden items from the 18th and 19th centuries, priests' garments, crosses, individual icons from the latter half of the 19th century, and other culturally and historically significant objects.