Манастири Овчарско-кабларске клисуре

English title: Monasteries of the Ovčar-Kablar Gorge

The monograph Monasteries of the Ovčar-Kablar Gorge examines the monasteries of the gorge as a unified sacred, cultural, historical and environmental complex. Its subject is not limited to individual monasteries, but includes the wider space of Mount Ovčar, Mount Kablar, the West Morava River, monastic settlements, hermitages, ruins, treasuries and sacred sites that shaped a distinctive spiritual landscape over several centuries.

The book is based on a combination of earlier scholarship and direct field research. The authors used historical sources, literature, travel accounts, art-historical and architectural studies, as well as direct examination of the monasteries, their churches, wall paintings, iconostases, treasuries and the contemporary condition of the monument complex.

The book’s main value lies in interpreting the monasteries not only as artistic monuments or places of devotion, but as historical institutions, spiritual centres, guardians of manuscript and artistic heritage, carriers of local and national memory, and active participants in the formation of regional identity.

Special attention is given to the relationship between natural setting and sacred space. The Ovčar-Kablar Gorge is not merely a geographical background to the monasteries; it is part of their meaning. Landscape, architecture, roads, hermitages, ruins, treasuries and living monastic communities together form a cultural-historical system known in Serbian tradition as the “Serbian Holy Mountain”.