On the road from Niš to Niška Banja (Niška Spa), on what was once the road to Constantinople, this tower was built using 952 skulls of the Serbian insurgents fallen in the Battle of Čegar in 1809, and as a warning to the Serbs. The Serbian duke Stevan Sinđelić, seeing that the Serbs could not repel the Turkish onslaught, fired his gun into the nearby powder kegs and blew up both himself and his insurgents, but also a large number of Turks who swarmed the redoubt.

The Turkish commander of the Battle of Čegar, Huršid Pasha, ordered that the tower be built on an empty location near the Constantinople road, so as to be as visible as possible, for the purpose of revenge and of instilling fear in the indigenous population. The skulls built into the tower were arranged in 56 rows, with around 17 skulls in each row. There are around 59 skulls remaining in it today.

After the liberation of Niš, as early as 1878, a protective roof on four pillars was erected above the tower, and in 1892, a chapel was built, which eventually protected the tower from dilapidation. The chapel was built according to the designs of Dimitrije T. Lek, and has a basis in the form of a cross. In the yard of the chapel, the bronze bust of Stevan Sinđelić was erected in 1938. At the base of the bust there is a relief in bronze, with a display of the battle.