Valjevo Walker: LJUBICA AND PETRIJA

-by Ljiljana Ljiljak, Valjevo Walker, Kolubara, Oct 1994

Translated by Katarina Vicentijevic

Not a single one of these new lamps, benches, jardinieres (wooden or brick), not even the floor mosaic, the fountain and the clock in Knez Miloseva (Prince Miloš’) Street can reach the inventiveness and authenticity of two small details that are used to name the most valuable and unusual parts of this famous shopping street: plates with the inscriptions “Princess Ljubica’s Square” and “Petria’s Wreath”.

Those two inscriptions are also rare for their artistic solution. One of them is placed vertically, with a longer side up on Despotovic’s house, and the other is across the street on “Janko Veselinovic” bookstore, both bent, which almost gives them the third dimension.

Their author, Dusan Arsenic, remembers, perplexed even today, the entire sequence of events which proved how the traditionally long and complicated procedure for this kind of works can be avoided. He wonders at the same time that those signs stand there even today. Nothing, however, would have become of it if that magician of so many possible and impossible things in the town, Branko Lukic, hadn’t asked himself four years ago, when the reconstruction of the street began: „What can suit Prince Milos better than Princess Ljubica!“ This is how that little square got its name! And to do justice to history and other things, the other Prince’s love, Petrija, also got its place in that genuine story - an alley with a beautiful garden was named “Petria’s Wreath”!

Those are the details that make Knez Miloseva or Prince Miloš’ Street memorable, everything else, though remarkably decorative, has already been seen.