RITAM GRADA / RHYTHM OF THE CITY
Prvo mesto kao najmoćniji začin zasigurno zauzima šafran. Bio je i ostao najskuplji na čitavom svetu The top spot, as the most powerful spice, is certainly occupied by saffron. It has been, and remains, the world’s most expensive spice
NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM BELGRADE In the kingdom of colours, aromas and flavours An exhibition entitled The Plant as a Spice, at one of Serbia’s oldest institutions, engages the senses of smell, taste and touch to lead visitors through the world of wondrous spices that have inscribed themselves in some of the most exciting pages of human history F ounded back in 1895, the Natural History Mu- seum in Belgrade is one of the country’s old- est national institutions and the first to have specialised in the scientific study, protection and presentation of the nation’s natural her- itage. Its collections preserve items covering a range of time that dates back 4.5 billion years – to meteorites from the time of our Solar System’s formation, via fos- sils dating back hundreds of millions of years, to exam-
ples of the Pančić spruce and Serbian phoenix flower. There’s also been something that smells wonder- ful in the Gallery of the Natural History Museum in re- cent days, with the launch of the exhibition ‘The Plant as a Spice. In the kingdom of colours, smells and tastes’, which is currently underway and runs until the end of June, and which connects biology, history, ontology, an- thropology and art in an interdisciplinary way. In an ef- fort to transform the tastes of individual ingredients, man has been combining, changing and reinterpreting the functions of what nature provides since prehistoric times, transforming nutrition, as a physiological need, into a cultural act. The need to not only exist, but rather also create, has made the process of preparing the most diverse dishes the ultimate skill, and spices play an in- dispensable role in this process. This exhibition’s author, biologist Dr Uroš Buzurović, brings us the story of the aromatic plants that have led to wars and misery, but which have at the same time protected and healed us, and marked our celebrations. The 39 herbs and spices presented in this exhibition in- clude some that come from these lands... “Alongside exotic spices that mainly originated in In- dia, China, the Maluku Islands (Spice islands) and South
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