Where is Salvija Square located?
Slavija Square
Until the 1880s, the area around Slavija was a large pool on the eastern outskirts of the city. The pond was naturally drained by the Vračarski potok, down the modern Nemanjina street, into the Gypsy Pond in the neighborhood of Savamala. The remnant of the pond is the large underground water spring under the modern Hotel Slavija.[3][4] The earth from the top of the Vračar hill above the Slavija was used to cover and drain the pond, in turn flattening the hill and creating the modern Vračar plateau.[5] The formation of the square started when a well-known Scottish businessman and Nazarene Francis Mackenzie, bought a large piece of land above the present square and parcelled it for sale (the area became subsequently known as Englezovac). Soon after that, Mackenzie has built a house for himself at Slavija (at the place where the old "Slavija" cinema used to be), which in 1910 was turned into the Socialist People's Center, a gathering place of the worker's movement. The other, smaller buildings at the corner of Kralja Milana and the square, where the famous cafés "Tri seljaka" and "Rudničanin" used to be, were destroyed before and during World War II.