It was a day when the sun didn't just shine from the sky, but gilded the river, the tower and the swords. I was walking towards the Smederevo Fortress, not as a visitor, but as someone who was called by the past. On that day, the city was not waking up in the 21st century - Serbia from the 15th century was waking up.
In front of the walls - tents. The smell of leather, smoke and roasting meat. Children in wonder, elders with a smile, all gathered as if under the tent of some big, folk celebration. And inside... inside, time stood still.
Smederevo fortress.
It stood over the Danube as a stone guardian of history. Its walls, wide and high, are not only a fortification - they are a memory, stubborn and dignified, of what was once the capital. I looked at it as one looks at an old wound - with respect and wonder that it had not yet disappeared.
But that day - she was not silent.
Inside the walls - a knight's tournament. The real one. Not an imitation. Real horses, real armor, real clashing spears. The crowd gathered around the wooden fences as the knights, those shadows of past centuries, passed us by. They didn't speak. They just walked, each step echoing in their chests, like a drum in a military march.
A horseman appeared - in full gear, plumed helmet, coat of arms on a shield. The wind carried sand and the smell of old iron. Children waved, women were baptized, men were silent. The onslaught began. Two horses, two men, two souls colliding under the court of steel. Spears broke, people cheered, and the fortress remembered another day when history played out again under its sky.
I walked along the ramparts. I watched the river shimmer under the walls. Goods, the army, and news from Constantinople used to come from there. Merchants, soldiers of the despot Đurđa went there, the fate of a small but defiant state went there. And now - people are walking, eating roast beef, children are carrying wooden swords, and through it all, laughter and the sound of a blacksmith's hammer echo from the medieval village inside the fortress.
I stopped at the big tower. He looked up. I was looking at the stone, at its crack. I asked him, "What did you see?" And he didn't answer me. He didn't even have to. His answer was in every child who carried a paper shield. In every elderly gentleman who told his grandson who was a despot. In every girl who smiled at the tournament. It was a day when history was not the past - it was the present.
The Smederevo fortress did not welcome me as a tourist. She welcomed me as a traveler from another world, to whom she briefly opened the door of her soul. In that silence between the trumpets and hoofs, I heard what is not taught in school.
That the past and the present are just two faces of the same shield.
And that every country that knows how to remember its knights still has a chance to be great.
