Mihailo Valtrović (Belgrade, 17 September 1839 - Belgrade, 9 September 1915) was a Serbian architect, professor of archeology, one of the first pioneers of art history in Serbia, and key representative of the Historismus along with architect Dragutin Dragiša Milutinović. Valtrović was the first professor of archeology in Serbia, the initiator and founder of Serbian Archeology and founder and first president of the Serbian Archaeological Society. He designed a number of state orders and decorations. Biography Mihailo Valtrović graduated from the natural science section of Lyceum of the Principality of Serbia in Belgrade. After a brief service in the General Administration, he received a government scholarship to pursue his post-graduate studies abroad at Karlsruhe, where he chooses to study ancient architecture. After having completed his studies and training in architecture at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Valtrović first applied his profession in the construction industry and then became a professor of science and technical subjects at Belgrade's Grandes écoles in 1875. In 1881 Valtrović was awarded the chair of the newly-established Department of Archeology for his profound knowledge of antique architecture and taking part in the early 1882 archeological expeditions at Viminacium. He also proposed a Monuments Protection Act in 1889.From the beginning, he devoted a significant part of his teaching activity to the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome, emphasizing the importance of the arts in the history of mankind. In 1896, Valtrović turned his efforts to the reorganization of the National Museum of Belgrade, where he held the post of the curator. Gradually, he left teaching altogether. His short but significant activity at the university was marked by an effort to introduce rigorous scientific methods in the study of antiquities. The stress, however, was placed upon the educational importance of classical antiquity and its aesthetic and ethical values for a modern established state and its cultural development, based on its historical character. Valtrović's program was influenced by his training, as well as the role models of German universities, where the study of classics was held to be the essential component of higher education. His protege, archeologist Miloje Vasić, would take his place at the Grandes écoles. In 1901, Valtrović's former teaching post was established for the first trained archeologist, Miloje Vasic, who received his Ph.D. in 1898 from his mentor Adolf Furtwangler at the University of Munich. For the next five decades, until Vasic's retirement in 1955, the