Journey of King Milan Obrenović to the East: Pilgrimage and the Culture of the Orient at the Serbian Court

The exhibition “Journey of King Milan Obrenović to the East: Pilgrimage and the Culture of the Orient at the Serbian Court” of the Museum in Smederevo will be officially opened in the Gallery of the National Museum Kraljevo, as part of the Žica Spiritual Assembly “Transfiguration 2025”, on Saturday, August 16th, 2025, starting at 8 p.m. The exhibition will be opened by the authors, Snezana Cvetković, PhD, museum advisor of the Museum in Smederevo, and Dejan Vukelić, MA, technical advisor of the Institute of Mathematics of the Serbian Academy of Sciences in Belgrade.

The basic idea and inspiration for the creation of the exhibition “Journey of King Milan Obrenović to the East: Pilgrimage and the Culture of the Orient at the Serbian Court” came from the book by the adjutant of King Milan Obrenović and his companion on the journey to the East in 1889, Colonel and later General Mihail Rašić, which he published under the title “With His Royal Highness King Milan in the East” in 1891/1892.

The key points of departure for the exhibition include the personality of Milan Obrenović, his abdication and motives for the journey to the Holy Land, the spiritual transformation he experienced at the tomb of Christ, the perception of the discourse of the Orient in the Serbian environment and its influence on the shaping of the court and court culture in the Kingdom of Serbia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Shortly after a series of turbulent events in public and private life, Milan Obrenović, accompanied by his closest associates, under the pseudonym “Count of Takovo”, set off on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, with stops in Constantinople, Beirut and Damascus. The picturesque journey of King Milan Obrenović took place in the period from March 17th to June 13th, 1889, according to the old calendar. The Count of Takovo traveled by “lightning” train, ship, post car, riding a horse, camped in the desert… He met numerous personalities, from the Sultan in Constantinople, the Patriarch of Constantinople and Jerusalem, Bedouins and Maronites, to the barber from Smederevo in Damascus, and we, inspired by this event, have taken you on a museological journey to the East.

The exhibition prints include photographs from the trip, photographs of the Arab salons of the Old Palace in Belgrade, which are kept in Belgrade museums and libraries: the Belgrade City Museum, the Museum of Applied Arts, the Historical Museum of Serbia in Belgrade and the National Library of Serbia, as well as photographs from the aforementioned book by Mihailo Rašić. Part of the exhibition is a series of postcards, photographs and books from private collections, as well as a carpet with the motif of the “Rašić Pattern” from the Ethnological Collection of the National Museum in Kraljevo.

The Arab Salon in the former Old Belgrade Palace of Obrenović was modeled by conservator and restorer MA Snežana Mijić using virtual reality, as well as by complexly making a replica of the ajami panel, i.e. the wooden polychrome paneling that decorated the walls of the aforementioned salon.

Directed by Tibor Varga from Novi Sad, a documentary film was made about this journey and its historical and artistic significance, which is discussed in the film by the authors of the exhibition, and excerpts from the book are interpreted by actor Marko Nedeljković.

The University Library “Svetozar Marković” in Belgrade has digitized Mihailo Rašić’s book “With His Royal Highness King Milan in the East” in order to make it available to as many users as possible. There is a QR code on the back of the exhibition catalog that leads to the digitized books.

The project “Journey of King Milan Obrenović to the East: Pilgrimage and the Culture of the Orient at the Serbian Court” was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia and the City of Smederevo.