Ružica Church

Lighting the frescoed walls of Ružica Church, a small chapel tucked into the side of the Serbian Kalemegdan fortress, are two chandeliers made entirely of spent bullet casing, swords, and cannon parts. It is a more fitting decoration than one might realize.

Controlled at various times by the Serbs, Turks, Hungarians, and Austrians, the small dark Ružica church has seen a lot of action. The space the church now occupies was, for over 100 years, used by the Turks as a gunpowder magazine.

The church had to be largely rebuilt after World War I. Though damaged by bombings, there was an upshot to the devastation. While fighting alongside England and the US, Serbian soldiers on the front line used their downtime to craft the incredible chandeliers from the materials available to them: the spent shells and weaponry that lay strewn around the battlefield.

The soldiers managed to carry their light giving creations to the church, where they still light the room to this day.