Images5

Market day before the old parish church

second half of the nineteenth century

The old church in the city centre

1880s

The market on the square before the old church

about 1880–1900

Liberty Square and Its Demolished Church, Before 1892

before 1892

A Crowded Market Before the Old Church, Novi Sad

1896–1918 · postcard

About this place

This Roman Catholic parish church stood on the main square of Novi Sad until the Name of Mary Church replaced it on the same site. The parish dates from 1702, and its first church, a modest temporary building, was taken down in 1742. On the same ground a new church went up, helped by well-off Catholics who had moved here after Belgrade fell to the Ottomans in 1739, and Gábor Patachich, Archbishop of Kalocsa, consecrated it in 1742. Set on fire in the bombardment of 12 June 1849, it lost its tower, and the repairs never rebuilt the original tower in full. After the city decided in 1891 to replace it, the church was pulled down in 1892, the year György Molnár drew the plans for its successor. This archive's photographs show its last years: a whitewashed front with one clock tower under a low pyramid roof between two small pedimented gables, beside the Holy Trinity column, with market carts before it.