Nis Audio Tours

The Romans called it Naissus, and they chose well: a river crossing on the Via Militaris, the highway connecting Rome's European provinces with its eastern territories, was always going to matter. Constantine the Great was born here on February 27, 274 AD, and when he became emperor he lavished money on his hometown, building a sumptuous imperial residence at Mediana just outside the city walls. The archaeological remains at Mediana give some sense of the scale of that investment, including floor mosaics and a bathhouse that served the court.

Nis changed hands repeatedly across the medieval centuries before the Ottomans captured it in 1375 and held it for five hundred years, leaving behind a well-preserved fortress on the Nisava River and, more grimly, the Skull Tower.

Built in 1809 on the orders of the Ottoman commander Hurshid Pasha, it incorporated the skulls of Serbian soldiers killed at the Battle of Cegar to discourage future uprisings. Serbia liberated Nis in 1877, and the tower is now enclosed in a chapel that feels both monument and wound.