Author’s Guidance Through the Exhibition “Brothers Musić: Pavlica and Brvenik”
The author’s guidance though the exhibition “Brothers Musić: Pavlica and Brvenik” will take place at the Gallery of the National Museum Kraljevo, on Tuesday, July 14th, 2026, starting at 6 p.m. The tour will be led by historian Milorad Obradović, PhD, curator of the National Museum Kraljevo and author of the exhibition, who through years of research has reconstructed the life and activities of the Musić brothers during a pivotal period of Serbian history in the second half of the 14th century.
The author’s guidance offers a unique opportunity to view the exhibition through the eyes of the person most deeply familiar with the subject. Brothers Stefan and Lazar Musić were not only nephews of Prince Lazar, but also his closest collaborators in efforts to unite the Raška territories against the advancing Ottoman threat. They controlled a strategically important belt from the middle Ibar, across Kopaonik, to the Lab, through which passed major trade routes exporting ore to Dubrovnik and further to Italy.
The author will acquaint visitors with little‑known facts about the town of Brvenik. Stefan Musić, the eldest son of Lazar’s sister Dragana, together with his brother Lazar, had a court in Brvenik on the Ibar. The small hilltop castle on a volcanic hill on the left bank of the Ibar formed the upper part of the town, while other walls and a tower with a protective ditch extended down the slope to the confluence of the Brvenica and Ibar rivers. A semicircular walled underground passage led from the fortress to the Ibar. The lower town protected part of the suburb, while the main urban‑commercial suburb, or marketplace, stretched outside the walls at the confluence of the two rivers, where there stood one Orthodox and one Roman Catholic church. The Orthodox church was dedicated to Saint Nicholas, while the Catholic church was dedicated to Saint Tryphon. A special theme will be the monastery Nova Pavlica, the endowment built by the Musić brothers together with their mother, who upon taking monastic vows received the name Theodosia and became abbess of this small women’s monastery.
The guidance will also discuss the findings from the double tomb discovered beneath the portrait of the Musić brothers during the 1984 archaeological campaign, what was taken by Turkish plunder and what remained, as well as the wooden reliquary in which the relics of Stefan and Lazar rest today — a gift of the Russian Orthodox Church, in gratitude for the donations the Musić brothers made to the Russian monastery of Saint Panteleimon on Mount Athos as early as 1381.