A real-photo postcard taken from the street corner beside the Bishop's Court shows a tall stone wayside cross on a plinth, with a signpost bolted to its base pointing travelers toward Szabadka and Zombor. Tram rails run through the cobbled junction in the foreground, and the corner building with its arched windows and iron balconies stands behind. The card was published by the Novi Sad stationer Urban Ignac and his son.
About this place
The oldest surviving public monument in Novi Sad. A cross of pink marble about five metres high, dating from the second half of the eighteenth century. It stood out in the roadway at the crossing of what are now Zmaj Jovina and Svetozara Miletića, beside the former Sava Vuković well, on a pedestal carrying an oval relief and inside an iron railing with lamps at its corners. It was damaged in the bombardment of 1849 and restored by Marija Trandafil in 1867.
The cross has stood in three places, and which one a photograph shows will date the photograph. It stood at the crossroads from the later eighteenth century until 1910, when it was moved because the tram tracks were being laid through its position. From 1910 to 1957 it stood in front of the Bishop's Palace, at the head of the same street. Since 1957 it has stood in the courtyard of St George's Cathedral. So a picture with the cross at the crossroads is from before 1910, and one with it before the palace falls between 1910 and 1957. The whole journey is a little over a hundred metres northward along a single street.
It is easily confused with the Holy Trinity Column, which stood on the main square and has its own entry here. The column was far larger, roughly 15 to 20 metres against this cross's five, and it never moved. In a photograph, this cross stands inside an iron railing with corner lamps, its pedestal carries a plain oval medallion, and its top is a bare crucifix. The column has no railing, and carries clouds, cherub heads, standing statues at its corners and garland swags, with a cross at its apex, which at a distance can read as a second small monument further off.