Skull Tower, Nish, Serbia

A grisly reminder of the bloodshed of the First Serbian Uprising is a tower literally made of rows of human skulls in quicklime.

The story goes that during the Battle of Čegar, the Serbian trenches were being overrun by attacking Ottomans.

So the commander Stevan Sinđelić personally detonated the powder magazine, obliterating his position on Čegar Hill to avoid being taken prisoner by Vizier Hurshid Pasha.

Some 952 Serbian skulls were collected from the battlefield and became the material for this tower in 1809 to deter another uprising.

After the Ottoman withdrawal in 1878, most of these were removed and buried.

But a 4.5-metre remnant of the tower is housed in a chapel and contains 54 skulls.