2 July 2024
The last stop on our Balkans Express Tour was Belgrade. It is by no means a 'pretty' capital, but Belgrade has a distinctive, fun and audacious atmosphere; it feels so authentic, miles away from the tourist facades and ‘theme park style’ attractions that have taken over some of its more famous counterparts.
While the city seems destined for a bright future, its chaotic past unfolds before your eyes: socialist blocks are squeezed between art nouveau masterpieces, and remnants of the Habsburg legacy contrast with Ottoman relics and socialist modernist monoliths. This is where the Sava and Danube Rivers kiss, an old-world culture that at once evokes time-capsuled communist-era Yugoslavia and the new-world, EU-contending cradle of cool.
Some 115 battles have been fought over the imposing Belgrade Fortress (aka Kalemegdan); the citadel was destroyed more than 40 times throughout the centuries. Fortifications began in Celtic times, and the Romans extended it onto the flood plains during the settlement of 'Singidunum', Belgrade's Roman name. Much of what stands today is the product of 18th-century Austro-Hungarian and Turkish reconstructions. In this labyrinth of gateways, moats, look-outs and defensive positions, you see the 300 or so years that Belgrade spent under Ottoman control – and the long decades when Austria-Hungary ruled this particular roost.
It is here that one grasps the real significance of the location. Beneath the fortress, the Danube sweeps around its corner, swallowing the Sava, stealing its soul and carrying it off east, towards the Black Sea. A continental junction. A line in the sand. A place where empires might – and did – collide. A place to build a major European capital.
And Belgrade is a major European capital. Of that there is no debate. It is the biggest city in what was Yugoslavia, the third biggest city (after Budapest and Vienna) on the Danube – a one-time romantic stop for the Istanbul-bound carriages of the historic Orient Express.
The relationship between Belgrade and Europe’s pariah state, Russia, is intricate and close; an alliance on political, religious and linguistic lines that has largely weathered the war in Ukraine, and long ensured that Serbia is caught in a tug of war between Europe’s west and east.
This push-me-pull-you was there in the direct aftermath of the Second World War, when the leader of what was then Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, feigned to accept the rise of the Eastern Bloc, only to defy Stalin in 1948 and carve out existence on the edge of it. It was an awkward position to hold; as awkward, perhaps as Tito’s place in history. He was, by most definitions, a dictator, who ruled his land for 36 years (until his death in 1980). Yet he remains hugely beloved in a Serbia that was a prime part of his power-base.
He is still in Belgrade too, in wealthy hillside Dedinje, where his former residence is now the Museum of Yugoslavia. This must-visit museum houses an invaluable collection of more than 200,000 artefacts representing the fascinating, tumultuous history of Yugoslavia. Photographs, artworks, historical documents, films, weapons, priceless treasure: it's all here.
Tito lies under a weighty marble slab in the House of Flowers, his onetime winter garden. The wider museum also pays respect – in nostalgic photos of life in Tito’s Balkans; in a range of trinkets given to the president by other world leaders, including a fragment of Moon rock gifted by Richard Nixon in 1970.
Back in the historic centre (Stari Grad), there are signs of elegance among the branded stores and chain restaurants of St Michael Street, the main commercial drag – the lovely Art Deco bookstore on the ground level of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts; the genteel Kafeterija Magazin 1907, a coffee shop in a Belle Époque department store on the cross-street of Kralja Petra, where a grand iron staircase still connects the floors.
But appearances can be deceptive. These two same streets were the cardo maximus and decumanus maximus of ancient Singidunum. Many, many boots have walked these ways.
The Hotel Moskva is a jewel of 1908, caught in the brief architectural window of Russian art nouveau, and very happy to stay there – day-dreaming in ornate mosaics on every floor. In the lobby bar, a grand-pianist tinkles Tchaikovsky. I cannot quite believe that the guests quaffing champagne as they listen are not waiting for the Orient Express.
At the intersection of Terazije and Trg Nikole Pasica, a basalt column recalls April 6 1941, the date the German invasion of Yugoslavia began. At the park’s south-east edge, the 15th-century Bajrakli Mosque is a last man standing; the only surviving Islamic place of worship from an Ottoman Belgrade that had 273 of them. But it looks the part, its green dome visible across the city, its interior richly decorated with gleaming gold and bright frescoes, many of them detailing the life of the titular 13th-century archbishop and kingmaker who became Serbia’s patron saint.
Finally, a word on the vibrant Bohemian quarter of Skadarlija with its tree-lined streets and impressive architecture. It is the most artistic, free-spirited area of Belgrade, with a distinctive atmosphere that can be sampled over a riverside coffee in a trendy café or some traditional Serbian food (such as cevapcici, burek and moussaka) in one of the centuries-old pubs. The local coffee is similar to Turkish coffee, rich and delicious. The only downside of Serbia’s coffee culture is that it’s legal to smoke indoors…
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