The First Kragujevac Gymnasium, established by Prince Miloš in 1833, was the first secondary school in modern Serbia. It is the institution from which most of Serbia's 19th-century intellectual class graduated and which produced many of the leading scientists, writers and politicians of the early Yugoslav state.
The present school building, a long yellow neo-Renaissance pile facing the central park, is the third home of the gymnasium and is still in active use as a high school. Eighty of its pupils were among those shot at Šumarice in October 1941, and a small memorial plaque inside the entrance lists their names.