Fun things to do in Belgrade

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Facing Pionirski Park on the west side is two old palaces that were developed by the rival modern-day Serbian royal clans. To the north is the Old Palace of the Obrenoviċ dynasty. Built in 1882, the building today is the home of Beograd’s city hall. Separated by a small garden to the south is the New Palace. Started in 1913 and renovated after extensive WWI damage for the Karaðeorðe family which reoccupied the building in 1922. It was the official palace until the assassination of King Alexander in 1934. Today it is the State Assembly for Serbia.

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Ivo Andriċ lived in the four rooms that make up this museum in this semi-art deco building just across the street from the New Palace next to Pionirski Park. Andric originally hailed from Travnik in Bosnia. As a young man, he became involved with the Serbian movement within the Austrian-annexed regions and this got him jail time during WWI. Following the war, he became both a writer and a diplomat for the fledgling Yugoslavia. During the German occupation, Andric holed up and wrote his classic “Bridge over the River Drina”. For this and other fine literary works, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961.

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Serbia was able to resist Austrian attacks in the initial stages of WWI thanks to the grave threats posed by vast Russian armies in Galicia and Poland. However, with the addition of Bulgaria to the Central Powers’ sphere, Serbia’s time was up in December 1915. A combined force of German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian armies overwhelmed Serbian defenses. The Serbs retreated over the mountains of Albania in the middle of winter suffering horrific losses. The few who made it to the Adriatic coast were evacuated to Salonika where they were integrated into a grand entente army which was held in place mostly by disease and the Bulgarians. Finally, late in 1918, the Allies moved north in full force quickly breaking through and knocking Bulgaria out of the war and restoring Serbia as a nation. The Allied commander Franche d’Esprey is remembered in this statue on the west side of Bulevar JNA just south of the Sveti Slava complex. Also, in the Novo Groblje there is a large section devoted to those Frenchmen who died in this part of the World.

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At the northern corner of Kalemegdan is this lovely little Serb Orthodox church, which translates as the Rose Church of Our Lady. It was built between 1867 and 1889, and restored in 1925.

It is impressive inside as well as out - but photography was not allowed inside.

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Your wander around Kalemegdan may leave you thirsty and footsore - perhaps even hungry.

If that happens, I recommend a pitstop in the cafe at the Kalemegdanska Terasa.

That’s what us hardy VTers did, and I was ready for it. A double espresso and a glass of sparkling water, plus half an hour in a comfortable chair. Wonderful.

And it has toilets.

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House of Flowers (Serbian: Kuća cveća Cyrillic: Кућа цвећа is the mausoleum of the leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, who died on May 4, 1980. It is located in the grounds of the Museum of Yugoslav History in Dedinje.
With the house of flowers there is also the Tito museum that displays an exhibition of the fashion and the clothes Tito and his wife Jovanka wore. An interesting view of an era. Also on the compound is a museumof things collected or given to Tito on his many travels in the world.

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Whilst walking through the Kalemejdan taking yet another photograph of a statue, a travelling companion came and muttered in my ear, "Are you going to take a photo of every dead Serb here?" Well, due to the great benefits of digital photography my cigarette packet sized camera and a postage stamp sized flashcard meant that I probably could have done. It did, however, set me thinking.

During my trips to Eastern Europe, I have noticed that there is a great love of statuary in that region. I could have created individual tips on each of the statues I saw, but I see little value in doing that. I offer this tip as an invitation to the visitor to just pause and look at the many statues on offer in Belgrade and indeed Eastern Europe in general.

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Within the confimes of the Old Fortress in Belgrade you may come upon the fairly modest building pictured. You would do well to stop and have a look at it as it is the tomb of one Silahdar Damat Ali Pasha, no less a person than the Grand Vizier of the Turkins empire and an important figure in Serbian history.

I don't propose to go into his entire history here, as it is well documented elsewhere on the internet, but he was involved in the Morean campaign of 1715 in an area that lies in modern day Greece. He achieved great military success here with relatively little loss of life. He then turned his attention to the North and the border with the Habsburg Austrian empire who had declared war on the Ottoman Turks and he lost his life in the Battle of Petrovaradin in 1716.

The entire fortress is free to enter.