Belgrade: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
The Sava runs into the Danube directly below this fortress, and whoever held the rock held the road between central Europe and the Ottoman empire — which is why the ground has been fought over in something like a hundred and fifteen wars and the city razed around forty times. The walls you walk on are Roman at the base, Serbian in the middle and Austrian on top. Two hours, and the park is free at any hour.
A short history of Belgrade
On the hill where the Sava meets the Danube lived first the Celts and then the Romans, who called the place Singidunum. The Slavic name Beli Grad, 'the white city', first appears in 878. Because of its position on the border between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, it was fought over again and again, and by some estimates it has been destroyed and rebuilt dozens of times. In 1456 the city withstood an Ottoman siege, and in 1521 it was taken by Suleiman the Magnificent. The last Ottoman garrison left in 1867. From 1918 it was the capital of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and later of Yugoslavia. In 1999 the city was bombed for weeks in a NATO operation.
The ten best sights in Belgrade
1Belgrade FortressFree, the whole park, and the rivers meet below it
2PobednikFree, from 1928, and it faces away from the city on purpose
3Ružica ChurchFree, inside the fortress wall, and the chandeliers are made of shell casings
4St Petka ChapelFree, mosaics floor to ceiling, and a spring runs under it
5Military Museum300 dinars, and the yard of captured guns outside is free
6National Museum of Serbia300 dinars, free on Sundays, and it was shut for fifteen years
7St Sava TempleFree, one of the largest Orthodox churches in the world, and the crypt is the best part
8Nikola Tesla Museum500 dinars with the demonstration, and his ashes are in the building
9Museum of Yugoslavia400 dinars, and the relay batons sent to Tito every year are here
10House of FlowersIn the same ticket, and Tito is buried under the glasshouse
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Belgrade →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Belgrade:
Free walking tours in Belgrade
The hill two rivers fight over
The Sava runs into the Danube directly below this fortress, and whoever held the rock held the road between central Europe and the Ottoman empire — which is why the ground has been fought over in something like a hundred and fifteen wars and the city razed around forty times. The walls you walk on are Roman at the base, Serbian in the middle and Austrian on top. Two hours, and the park is free at any hour.
- Pobednik · Ivan Meštrović made it in 1928 for a fountain on Terazije, in the middle of town, and the city refused it — a naked bronze man was not going into the main square. So it was put up here instead, on the edge of the cliff, and it faces out across the rivers rather than in at the city, looking towards the empire it was made to commemorate beating.
- Military Museum · The free yard outside holds the thing most people come for: a piece of an American F-117 stealth bomber, shot down over Serbia on the twenty-seventh of March 1999 by a battery using a tactic nobody had tried. It is the only stealth aircraft ever lost in combat anywhere.
- Kalemegdan Park · The name is two Turkish words — kale, fortress, and meydan, the open ground where battles are fought. The Austrians and the Ottomans traded this hill back and forth seven times in the eighteenth century alone, and the park was laid out over the rubble only in the 1860s, when the last Ottoman garrison finally marched out.
- Ružica Church · It was the garrison’s gunpowder store before it was a church, and after the First World War the soldiers who came back made the two chandeliers inside out of what they had: spent shell casings, cartridges, bayonets and the hilts of swords. The two statues by the door are a medieval knight and an infantryman of 1914.
- St Petka Chapel · A spring runs out of the rock under the chapel and people have been coming to it for its water since long before the building, which went up in 1937. The whole interior is mosaic, floor to vault, and there is a queue at the tap outside most mornings with plastic bottles.
- Belgrade Zoo · It opened inside the fortress in 1936, and an American alligator called Muja arrived here in 1937 — he is still alive, which makes him the oldest alligator known anywhere. He lived through the German bombing of April 1941, which destroyed most of the zoo, and through the NATO bombing of 1999.
What the Ottomans left behind
Belgrade was an Ottoman town for most of three hundred and fifty years and had something like two hundred and seventy mosques in it. One is left. The rest of what survives is quieter — the shape of the streets, a bath built into a prince’s house, the Turkish words still used for half the neighbourhoods — and it ends in the lane where the writers drank. Two and a half hours, and most of it is pedestrian.
- Knez Mihailova · The street runs along the line of the main Roman road through Singidunum, which is why it is straight when nothing else in the old town is. Under the Ottomans this was gardens and drinking fountains; it was cut through as a boulevard only in 1870, and the Austrian-era facades on it went up in thirty years.
- Princess Ljubica’s Residence · Built in 1831 for the wife of Prince Miloš, and it is the clearest thing in the city about what that moment was: the rooms are laid out as Ottoman divan chambers with low seating round the walls, there is a proper Turkish bath built into the house, and the furniture is Viennese.
- Cathedral Church · Finished in 1840, and the two men buried in the ground outside it are the reason Serbs write the way they do: Dositej Obradović, who argued the language of the people should be the language of books, and Vuk Karadžić, who then rewrote the alphabet so that every letter is one sound.
- Question Mark · The oldest tavern in Belgrade, trading since 1823, and it is actually called "?". The owner named it after the cathedral across the road, the church objected to a drinking house using its name, and he hung a question mark over the door while he thought of something else. He never did.
- Bajrakli Mosque · Built around 1575, and the last one standing out of something like two hundred and seventy. The name means the flag mosque: a banner was raised here to signal the start of prayer, and every other mosque in the city waited for it before beginning. It was set on fire by a mob in 2004 and has been repaired.
- Skadarlija · The lane was a Roma settlement in the 1830s and became the writers’ quarter in the 1890s, when the Dardaneli — the kafana where every poet in Belgrade drank — was pulled down and the whole crowd simply moved two streets over. The cobbles are original and ruinous on heels.
A century built and bombed
Belgrade has been bombed by five different air forces in one century — Austrian in 1914, German in 1941, Allied in 1944, German again on the way out, NATO in 1999 — and almost every building on this walk carries a mark of one of them. It ends at the grave of the man who held the country together between two of those wars. Three hours, and it runs south in a line, so a taxi back is sensible.
- Hotel Moskva · Opened in 1908 by King Petar the First, financed by a Russian insurance company, and the green tiles on the front were fired at the Zsolnay works in Pécs in Hungary — the same factory that tiled half of Budapest. The cake served in the café has been called Moskva šnit since the 1970s.
- National Assembly · The foundation stone went down in 1907 and the building was not finished until 1936 — two wars got in the way. On the fifth of October 2000 a crowd of several hundred thousand came up these steps, a bulldozer went through the door, and Slobodan Milošević was out of power by the next morning.
- Tašmajdan Park · The name is Turkish for stone quarry, and that is what it was — the Romans cut the stone for Singidunum out of this ground, and there are tunnels under the grass. On the twenty-third of April 1999 a NATO missile hit the television building at the park’s edge and killed sixteen people working the night shift; the memorial beside it is one word, Zašto. Why.
- St Sava Temple · It stands on the spot where in 1595 the Ottomans brought the bones of Saint Sava from a monastery and burned them in public, to break the Serbs. The dome weighs four thousand tonnes and was built on the ground, then lifted into place in 1989 by hydraulic jacks over forty days, a centimetre at a time.
- Nikola Tesla Museum · Tesla died alone in a New York hotel in 1943; his nephew brought the papers and the urn here, and his ashes sit in this building in a gold-plated sphere. There has been a public argument for years over whether they should be moved to St Sava, and the museum has refused.
- House of Flowers · Tito is buried under this glasshouse, which was his winter garden. His funeral in May 1980 brought representatives of a hundred and twenty-eight countries — four kings, thirty-one presidents, six princes and twenty-two prime ministers stood in the same room, which had not happened before and has not since.
Getting to Belgrade and getting around
- Nikola Tesla Airport · Bus A1 to Slavija, 300 dinars, 30 minutes
- Beograd Centar · The new main station, and the fast train to Novi Sad takes 36 minutes
- BAS Bus Station · Buses to Sarajevo, Skopje and Budapest, and tickets at the window
- Trg Slavija · The roundabout everything passes through, and the fountain runs to music
Cheap eats in Belgrade
Eight counters where Belgrade eats standing. Burek is the breakfast — a coiled pastry of filo and cheese or minced meat, sold by weight from a bakery window from five in the morning, about 150 dinars a quarter, and drunk down with yoghurt from a carton. The other one is pljeskavica, a flattened burger the size of a plate, from a window with no seats. A full lunch in a kafana is about 900 dinars.
- Pekara Trpković · About 150 dinars a quarter, and from 5am
- Zeleni Venac · Open 6 to 6, and the fruit rows are at the back
- Kalenić Market · The biggest open market, in Vračar, and best before ten
- Bajloni Market · Small, under Skadarlija, and the cheese counters are at the back
- Zemun Market · The one the locals use, and the fish come in on Friday
- Durmitor · Grilled meat in Zemun, and a plate is about 700 dinars
- Question Mark · About 900 dinars for a main, and no booking
- Mandarina Caffe · Coffee in Vračar, and the terrace fills from nine
Museums in Belgrade
- Nikola Tesla Museum · 500 dinars with the demonstration, and the tour is hourly
- Museum of Yugoslavia · 400 dinars, and the ticket covers the House of Flowers
- National Museum of Serbia · 300 dinars, free on Sundays, and it was shut for fifteen years
- Museum of Contemporary Art · 300 dinars, a 1965 glass crystal at the confluence, and the park is free
- Ethnographic Museum · 200 dinars, village costume and craft, and the weaving room
- Historical Museum of Serbia · 300 dinars, one big exhibition at a time, and it changes
- Vuk and Dositej Museum · 150 dinars, tiny, and half an hour is enough
- Yugoslav Film Archive · 300 dinars a screening, and one of the largest archives in Europe
Parks and gardens in Belgrade
Belgrade sits on the last hill before the Pannonian plain, with two rivers meeting at its foot, and the green comes from that — islands, river beaches and a mountain half an hour south. Everything on this list is free except the botanical garden.
- Ada Ciganlija · Free, and the pedal boats and showers cost a little
- Kalemegdan Park · Free, the fortress grounds, and the sunset over the rivers
- Great War Island · Free, the bridge runs June to September
- Tašmajdan Park · Free, a Roman quarry with tunnels under the grass
- Topčider Park · Free, a plane tree planted in 1830, and the prince’s house
- Košutnjak · Free, 330 hectares of forest, and running paths all through it
- Botanical Garden Jevremovac · 200 dinars, closed Mondays, and the glasshouse is the point
- Avala · Free, half an hour south, and 511 metres is the whole climb
Things to do in Belgrade with kids
- Belgrade Zoo · 700 dinars, in Kalemegdan, and open till dusk
- Ada Ciganlija · Free, a lake beach with shallow water and pedal boats
- Museum of Illusions · 900 dinars, an hour, and the tilted room is the one they remember
- Zemun Quay · Free, the swans come to the railing, and bring bread
- Military Museum yard · Free, tanks and guns you can walk between, and a stealth wing
- Tašmajdan Park · Free, playgrounds and a swimming pool beside them
- Great War Island · Free, the pontoon bridge in summer, and the Lido beach
- Ušće Shopping Centre · The indoor option when it rains, and the top floor is food
Live music in Belgrade
- Dom Omladine · From 1,000 dinars, and the cinema downstairs is cheap
- KC Grad · A warehouse in Savamala, concerts and talks, and a good bar
- Drugstore · A former slaughterhouse, techno, and it starts after one
- Kolarac Endowment · From 1,000 dinars, the philharmonic, and the acoustics are famous
- Sava Centar · The 1977 congress hall, reopened in 2023, and the big touring shows
- Štark Arena · 20,000 seats, stadium acts and basketball, and tram 7 goes there
- Bitef Teatar · In a deconsecrated Evangelical church, and the programme is brave
- National Theatre · From 600 dinars for opera, which is the cheapest in Europe
Nightlife in Belgrade
Belgrade goes out later than anywhere else in Europe and it does it on the water: the splavovi are rafts moored along both rivers, built of timber and corrugated iron, and in summer the whole nightlife moves onto them. Nothing starts before midnight and the ones that matter are on the Sava bank below Novi Beograd.
- Savamala · Bars from ten, and the clubs after midnight
- Beton Hala · The concrete warehouses on the Sava quay, all restaurants and bars
- Skadarlija · Live kafana music from eight, and it runs until two
- Dorćol · The quarter where the small bars are, and no queue at any of them
- Belgrade Design District · A passage of small shops by day, and bar yards by night
- Drugstore · The serious techno room, and it does not fill until two
- Zemun Quay · The quieter rafts, fish and rakija, and families until late
- Ada Ciganlija · The summer bars along the lake, open from afternoon to dawn
Frequently asked questions about Belgrade
What is there to see in Belgrade?
The top sights in Belgrade are Belgrade Fortress, Pobednik and Ružica Church. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Belgrade?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Belgrade without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Belgrade?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Belgrade, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The hill two rivers fight over.
How do you get to Belgrade and get around?
The main ways are Nikola Tesla Airport, Beograd Centar and BAS Bus Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Belgrade, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Belgrade that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Belgrade for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.