The Avala Tower, one of Belgrade's symbols and with its 204.5 meters the tallest construction in the Balkans, has been opened today, at the same place it had taken before being destroyed by Nato in 1999. The new facility was opened by Belgrade's Mayor Dragan Djilas, who said that the tower should not be a reminder of the past, but rather the message for the future.

The original tower was constructed from 1961 to 1965 and was the pride of Yugoslav socialist engineering. It was the only tower in the world to have had an equilateral triangle as its cross section and one of very few towers not perched directly into the ground, but standing on its legs. As the decades passed, people got used to 'The Tower' as a landmark of Belgrade, an orientation upon arriving to Belgrade and leaving it.

On April 29, 1999, it was bombed by Nato war planes, supposedly to put the national Serbian TV off the air. But, for the most part, that did not work, since RTS (Radio and Television of Serbia) was broadcasting via many local TV stations across Serbia.

Wikipedia tells us that the blast was one of the loudest explosions heard throughout Belgrade during the 78 days and nights of Nato's merciless bombardment of the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It was the third tallest structure in the world ever destroyed (after the Twin Towers of the WTC).