Serbia Travel Guide

The Serbian capital sits on a high promontory at the confluence of the Sava and the Danube — Kalemegdan Fortress is the centrepiece, an Ottoman-and-Habsburg citadel with the Belgrade Military Museum, the Pobednik (Victor) monument by Ivan Meštrović overlooking the rivers, and a long park edge that turns into the city's evening promenade. Skadarlija, the bohemian cobbled street, is the dining and live-music heart of the old city, with traditional Serbian kafanas (Šešir Moj, Tri Šešira, Dva Jelena) playing tamburica music nightly. The Knez Mihailova pedestrian street runs north from Republic Square (Trg Republike, the city's central meeting point) past the National Museum, the Ethnographic Museum, the Belgrade City Library and the Russian Tsar Hotel into Kalemegdan. The Saint Sava Cathedral on Vračar plateau is one of the largest Orthodox churches in the world; the Nikola Tesla Museum on Krunska 51 holds the inventor's actual ashes in a golden sphere designed by sculptor Frano Kršinić. Belgrade Waterfront is the modern Sava-side redevelopment; the Ada Ciganlija peninsula is the city beach and watersports cluster on the Sava lake. Belgrade's splavovi (floating river clubs) on both banks of the Sava and Danube give the city a unique summer-night energy.

Novi Sad on the Danube, ninety kilometres north of Belgrade, is the capital of the Vojvodina autonomous province and the cultural pole of Serbia's Habsburg-era north. The pedestrianised core around Trg Slobode (Liberty Square), the neo-Gothic Catholic Cathedral (Crkva imena Marijinog), the Dunavska and Zmaj Jovina shopping streets, and the Matica Srpska gallery (Serbia's oldest cultural institution, founded 1826) form the city's daily life. Across the Danube, the Petrovaradin Fortress is one of Europe's largest fortified complexes, built in the early eighteenth century in the Vauban tradition under Habsburg engineer Andrija Cornaro and Maximilian de Sterneck — sixteen kilometres of underground passages, the celebrated «inverted clock» on the Klisura tower (where the long hand shows hours and the short hand minutes for visibility from the Danube), and panoramic views over the city. Out of Novi Sad, Sremski Karlovci is the baroque small town and seat of the Serbian Orthodox seminary (the Karlovačka gimnazija opened in 1791); Subotica on the Hungarian border is the Magyar/Austrian art nouveau capital with the magnificent City Hall and Synagogue (1902) by Marcell Komor and Dezső Jakab; Sombor, Zrenjanin and Vrbas round out the Habsburg-era town circuit. Fruška Gora National Park between Novi Sad and Belgrade holds sixteen Serbian Orthodox monasteries scattered across forested hills.

Serbia's medieval monastic heritage is among the deepest in Eastern Europe and the country's two UNESCO World Heritage cultural sites belong to it. Studenica Monastery (founded 1190 by Stefan Nemanja, the founder of the Nemanjić dynasty) is the most important Serbian monastery, set in the Ibar valley two hundred kilometres south of Belgrade — the white-marble Church of the Virgin holds frescoes from the early thirteenth and fourteenth centuries including the celebrated Crucifixion. Sopoćani Monastery near Novi Pazar (built 1260 by King Stefan Uroš I) holds frescoes considered among the finest of all Byzantine art, with the «Dormition of the Virgin» the headline panel. Žiča, the red-painted monastery near Kraljevo, was the coronation church of Serbian medieval kings; Mileševa near Prijepolje holds the celebrated «White Angel» fresco (a thirteenth-century image so iconic that the first transatlantic satellite TV transmission carried it to America in 1962); Manasija near Despotovac is a fortified late-medieval monastery; Ravanica is the burial church of Prince Lazar; and Žitomislić, Krušedol and the sixteen Fruška Gora monasteries north of Belgrade extend the circuit into Vojvodina. Most monasteries are working religious houses with monks or nuns in residence; visitors dress modestly (covered shoulders and knees) and are welcomed for both the architecture and, for those interested, the Orthodox liturgical music tradition.

Serbia is one of Europe's great river-and-mountain countries. The Iron Gates (Đerdap) gorge on the Romanian–Serbian Danube border is one of Europe's great river landscapes — the Danube slices through the Carpathians for roughly a hundred kilometres, with the Decebalus Rex stone sculpture on the Romanian bank opposite the Đerdap National Park headquarters and the Lepenski Vir prehistoric site (8 000 years old, fishermen's settlements with monumental sandstone heads) on the Serbian side. The Drina river canyon between Bajina Bašta and Višegrad cuts a narrow gorge through the Tara mountains — the Tara National Park, with the Banjska Stena viewpoint and the Mokra Gora narrow-gauge train (the «Šargan Eight» line) restored by film-maker Emir Kusturica, is the headline visit; the Drvengrad ethno-village built by Kusturica for his film 'Life Is a Miracle' sits at the top of the same line. The Uvac meanders in southwestern Serbia are a series of horseshoe river bends viewed from the Molitva viewpoint above the canyon; Kopaonik in the south is the country's largest mountain mass and a winter ski resort; Zlatibor in the west is the year-round mountain resort. The Đavolja Varoš («Devil's Town») earth-pyramid natural monument in the southern Toplica district is a cluster of two hundred earth-pyramid rock formations 2–15 m high topped with stone caps — one of the country's most distinctive natural landmarks.

Modern Serbia carries one of Europe's deepest Roman archaeological stacks. Sirmium (modern Sremska Mitrovica in Vojvodina) was one of the four imperial-era capitals of the Roman Empire — alongside Trier, Milan and Nicomedia — under the Tetrarchy, and ten Roman emperors were born here including Aurelian, Probus, Constantius II and Gratian. The Sirmium archaeological site at the city centre holds the imperial palace ruins, mosaic floors and the great hippodrome line. Felix Romuliana at Gamzigrad in eastern Serbia (UNESCO World Heritage Site) is the late-Roman palace and mausoleum complex of Emperor Galerius, with extensive surviving polychrome mosaic floors. Viminacium near Kostolac on the Danube was a major Roman legionary camp and provincial capital of Moesia Superior — visitor circuits include the bath complex, the necropolis with three thousand excavated graves, and the surviving mammoth skeleton (the «Vika» mammoth) found on the same site. Naissus (modern Niš) was the birthplace of Constantine the Great and his Mediana imperial residence outside the city centre is open to visitors. Lepenski Vir on the Đerdap Danube preserves the eight-thousand-year-old Mesolithic fishing-settlement sandstone-head sculptures.

Belgrade is one of Europe's strongest summer-night-life cities, and the splavovi tradition is its signature: between sixty and a hundred floating river clubs anchored along the Sava and the Danube turn the riverbanks into a continuous open-air dance and music scene from May to October, with venues like Freestyler, Lasta, 20/44, Hot Mess and River shifting from year to year. Land-based clubs (Klub Drugstore, KC Grad, Mladost-Ludost, Blender, Apollo) carry the techno, house and indie scenes; the Belgrade Beer Festival in mid-August at Kalemegdan and the Belgrade Manifest electronic-music festival in summer are anchor events. The headline date of the year, however, is the Exit Festival in early July at the Petrovaradin Fortress in Novi Sad — one of Europe's biggest and most distinctive open-air music festivals, set inside the moats and bastions of the eighteenth-century fortress with the Dance Arena (the techno stage in the largest moat) as the festival's signature space; previous headliners include The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, David Guetta, Carl Cox, Nina Kraviz, Adam Beyer, Charlotte de Witte and Solomun. The Belgrade jazz scene runs year-round at venues like the Belgrade Jazz Festival in October at Dom Omladine; the Belgrade Music Festival (BEMUS) is the classical-music anchor in October.

Serbian food culture is one of the most robust and most welcoming in Europe. The grilled-meat tradition (roštilj) is the headline — ćevapi (small grilled beef-and-lamb sausages, usually in groups of five or ten with onion and somun flatbread), pljeskavica (the Balkan flat-burger, mostly with kajmak and onion), karađorđeva šnicla (the rolled-and-breaded veal cutlet stuffed with kajmak, named after Karađorđe Petrović), mućkalica (mixed-meat-and-vegetable stew) and the long sausage tradition of southern Serbia (especially the spicy Leskovac specialty). The bakery side runs through burek (the flaky filo pastry with cheese, meat or spinach, eaten any time of day with yogurt) and pogača (the breakfast bread). Serbian wines (Negotinska Krajina, Fruška Gora and southern Serbia) are increasingly export-quality, with Prokupac as the indigenous red grape and Tamjanika as the indigenous white. Rakija — the fruit brandy — is the national spirit, with šljivovica (plum brandy, the Serbian default at weddings, funerals and family meetings) by far the most common, followed by kajsijevača (apricot), dunjevača (quince), lozovača (grape) and viljamovka (Williams pear). The Skadarlija lane in Belgrade and the kafanas of Novi Sad and Subotica are the cultural gateway; the Niš Roštiljijada in early September is the country's grilled-meat festival and one of the most distinctive food events in southeastern Europe.