Ilija M. Kolarac Endowment
Belgrade's oldest major concert hall, opened 1932 and long prized for its acoustics.
The Ilija M. Kolarac Endowment stands on Studentski trg in Belgrade's old town, built with money left by the merchant Ilija Milosavljevic Kolarac for the education of the Serbian people. Petar Bajalovic drew up the design, and the building opened on 4 February 1932 with a concert by the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra. Its main auditorium seated around twelve hundred and was the largest in the city at the time, and the endowment is registered as a cultural institution of national importance.
The Concert Hall remains the principal home of classical music in Belgrade and is widely regarded as the city's finest room acoustically, though jazz, ethno and other genres also appear. Together with the smaller Music Gallery it stages more than three hundred concerts and musical events each year, produced by the endowment's own Music Centre and by outside organisers including the Belgrade Philharmonic, RTS Music Production and Jeunesses Musicales. A long-running programme of public lectures continues the founder's educational purpose.
Highlights
- Concert Hall opened in 1932 with about 1,200 seats
- Acoustics widely rated the best in Belgrade
- Over 300 concerts and music events each year
- Public lecture series continuing the founder's bequest
