Not far from the site where the Battle of Kosovo was fought between the Serbs and Ottomans on 28 June 1389, and which ended in a draw with the deaths of both commanders (Lazar and Murad I), the Serbs erected the Gazimestan Monument in 1953. The 25-metre-high tower, surrounded by four distinctive concrete chimneys, symbolises for the Serbian people the myth of defeat and the foreign rule of the Turks from 1459 to 1804.

The 28th of June also became the important Serbian holiday of Vidovdan (St. Vitus Day), which has a particularly symbolic significance at the Gazimestan memorial on the Field of Blackbirds.

Since the end of the war in 1999, the celebrations between the ethnic groups of Serbs and Albanians have repeatedly given rise to major national and religious conflicts.

At the base of the visually medieval-style tower is an inscription of the Kosovo Oath coined by Prince Lazar, which reads roughly as follows: ‘Whoever is Serbian, was born Serbian or has Serbian blood or heritage and did not fight in the Battle of Kosovo, may he never have the offspring he desires, may nothing grow that his hand has sown. May he be cursed for all eternity!’

On 28 June 1989, Slobodan Milosević gave his heavily criticised but historically significant Blackbird Field speech here to mark the 600th anniversary of the battle.

The slender tower is accessible to the top and offers a wide, unrestricted view of the Field of Blackbirds and the Kopaonik Mountains in Serbia. Within sight, in the middle of the field, is the small Bajraktar Tomb, a memorial to Sultan Murad's fallen standard-bearer. It is an important place of pilgrimage, especially for followers of the Sadije Dervish Order, to which the standard-bearer belonged. It was renovated in 2013 with Turkish funds.