The Weifert's Brewery has been included on the list of the 7 Most Endangered cultural heritage sites in Europe for 2026 by Europa Nostra!
HOW IT STARTED?
The Old National (Weifert's) Brewery, an important cultural monument of great national significance and the oldest brewery in the Balkans, was meant to mark 300 years since its founding in 2022 in silence, beneath collapsed roofs and crumbling walls, closed to the public.
It was precisely that silence that prompted the Neozoik Foundation, together with the children’s architecture studio “La Villette” from Pančevo, to try and “revive” the Brewery, engage in dialogue with citizens and experts, educate young people about the importance of cultural heritage, and celebrate the Brewery’s 300th birthday at the level of the City of Pančevo.
That year, the project “Weifert's Brewery Works (Again/Not)” was realized, supported by the Jelena Šantić Foundation through the 2022 “Brave Steps” call.
Along the way, we were supported by the National Museum in Pančevo, the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments Pančevo, the Gymnasium “Uroš Predić,” as well as many individuals and citizens of Pančevo. You can learn more about the project and everything we achieved HERE.
We continued our work in 2024 with a new project titled “Let’s Save Weifert.” While the earlier project focused on awakening the public of Pančevo, this time we consciously stepped beyond local frameworks and addressed the wider public in Serbia.
Our aim was to explain why the Weifert's Brewery is a monument of national importance, why it forms part of our country’s shared identity and cultural heritage, and why it now faces a real threat of complete collapse and oblivion. We wanted the question of the Brewery’s fate not to remain solely a Pančevo issue, but to become a matter that concerns all of us.
Through articles, posts, and video content, we shed light on the period when Pančevo was one of the key industrial centers of the region, a city open to the world and to the future. Within the project, we gave interviews and wrote for youth-oriented media outlets such as Oblakoder, Lice ulice, and Autonomija. We spoke about why the restoration of the Brewery matters to us, and why it must become a focus of the broader public and institutions.
We viewed all this through the lens of “global, yet ours” values that once defined Pančevo and that are now quietly disappearing before our eyes. We recalled how balls were organized at the Brewery, how people arrived by boat from Zemun for parties, how Weifert organized a birthday celebration for a famous poet Jovan Jovanović Zmaj, and how important Pančevo once was as a place of encounter, work, and culture.
At the same time, we did not shy away from the present, asking how and why we allow such heritage to deteriorate and vanish. In parallel, we quietly built another important story: the theatre play “The Place I Always Return To”, created by small hands from Pančevo for all the grown-ups. The performance was prepared by young girls from Pančevo together with dramaturge Tijana Grumić and actor Danilo Brakočević.
Through engaged theatre, they took us from the past, through the present, and into the future of Pančevo - writing, drawing, playing music, composing, sewing, gluing, acting, and dancing.
The play premiered at the Cultural Center of Pančevo, which from the very beginning was a strong pillar of support for the project. Amid laughter, thunderous applause, quiet sighs, and even a few tears, the audience was left with a bitter question: why is the pride of the city - the Weifert's Brewery - today so neglected?
Especially resonant were the words of Iris Radovanović’s song: “We have always been the world.”
The realization of the play and the project was also supported by the Historical Archives in Pančevo, which provided valuable archival material, both for the performance itself and for the ongoing presentation of the Brewery’s history on social media.
Through these projects, the Weifert's Brewery once again became a place of encounter and new connections, both with local people to whom it has always been close and important, and with long-standing advocates for Serbia’s cultural heritage who recognized that the time had come for the Brewery to receive serious support from both the state and Europe. Strengthened by the experience of the Europa Nostra Serbia team, and with the support of our existing partners, we nominated the Weiferts's Brewery for the “7 Most Endangered” program.
Since its launch in 2013, the “7 Most Endangered” program has become a leading civil society initiative dedicated to saving Europe’s threatened heritage. The program has provided visibility, support, and urgent measures for 77 monuments and heritage sites in 35 countries, many of which have since been safeguarded for present and future generations. The program is run by Europa Nostra with the support of the European Investment Bank Institute.
Although one might think that the inclusion of the Weifert's Brewery on the 2026 “7 Most Endangered” list is not a cause for celebration, this program will help the broader Serbian and European community understand what we at the local level have long known - that the Brewery is worth saving. That we do not have to remain solely with memories of former glory, nor turn away from an uncomfortable present, but that we can imagine, and work toward its future.
You can learn more about all 7 cultural heritage sites nominated this year at THIS LINK.