Belgrade's Roman Well open to public (photos)

Belgrade's Roman Well open to public (photos)

"We replaced all the wiring and placed a railing along the well so that our fellow citizens can safely visit," he said.

Access to the site will be free of charge "in the coming period," Kovačević explained, and added it would be open to the public from 10:00 until 18:00 hours on work days. Visitors will be organized into groups of 15, and will have an expert guide accompanying them. Member of the interim authorities in Belgrade Goran Vesić told reporters that the city in this way "wanted to show that they cared about the Belgrade Fortress," and would continue to invest in this tourist destination, which, according to him, is especially attractive to those arriving in Belgrade via its rivers.

Vesić stressed that the reconstruction of the Roman Well was "only the first step," and that another project aimed at boosting the appeal of the fortress would follow.

The well is some 55 meters deep, 3.4 meters wide, and has a staircase with 212 steps.

The name of the location is a misnomer - the well was in fact built by Austrians between 1717 and 1731, and served as an underground water tank. It has a staircase that descends to the depth of 30 meters. Attempting to find a groundwater current, the Austrians dug the structure to the depth lower than the Sava River bed, through a rock at the 54th meter, but failed, archaeologist Marko Popović explained.

Instead, they wound up with a water tank that collected water through its walls.

When the Serbian army entered the fortress in the 19th century and found the structure, they assumed it was Roman.

"Back then it was believed that every old building was Roman," noted Popović. The Yugoslav Kingdom Army emptied the well in 1940, cleaned it up, and measured it. The last time divers were sent there was in 2006, when a miniature amphipod, measuring only 5 milimeters in length, was discovered - a lifeform not found anywhere else in Serbia.

The location has been the source many urban legends. One says that the well served as prison for Hungarian conspirators who at one point "killed each other," while another claims that German divers found a treasure hidden there by the Kingdom's Army.

During the 1950s, a man murdered his lover by throwing her down the well. Her body was recovered ten days later. The case inspired famed filmmaker Dušan Makavejev to film his movie "Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator."