Things to do in Belgrade

Landmark · Stari Grad

The fortress on the ridge where the Sava meets the Danube, with a park wrapped around it and the best view in the city.

Local tip: Everyone photographs the Victor statue at sunset. The better hour is early morning, when the park belongs to chess players and dog walkers, and the lower ramparts toward the Danube are empty and free to walk.

Neighborhood · Across the Sava, west

A planned socialist city of numbered superblocks, brutalist towers and enormous green space between them.

Local tip: Addresses here are given by block number, not street, and Blok 45 and Blok 70 are as far apart as two different towns. Blok 45's riverfront promenade along the Sava is where Novi Beograd actually lives on a summer evening.

Nightlife · Between the centre and the river

The old warehouse district that became Belgrade's design and nightlife quarter, and then met the Belgrade Waterfront development.

Local tip: Savamala's transformation is a live and contested story rather than a finished one — parts were cleared for the Waterfront project. What remains around Karađorđeva and Braće Krsmanović is still the most interesting few streets in the city after dark.

Nature · Sava river, south-west

A river island turned peninsula with a seven-kilometre lake beach, forest paths and every watersport the Sava allows.

Local tip: Belgraders call it 'the Belgrade sea' without irony. It is genuinely a beach — swimming, rowing, bars — twenty minutes from the centre and free. Go on a weekday; a July Saturday puts a hundred thousand people on it.

Food · Stari Grad

The cobbled bohemian street of nineteenth-century kafanas, live music and long grilled-meat dinners.

Local tip: It is touristed and the prices reflect it, but the kafanas here are genuine institutions with a hundred years of history. Go late — Belgrade eats at nine and the music does not start until the tables are full.

Neighborhood · North-west, across the Danube from the centre

A separate Habsburg town absorbed into Belgrade, with a low-rise old quarter, a riverside quay and a nineteenth-century watchtower above it.

Local tip: Zemun was Austria-Hungary while Belgrade across the river was the Ottoman frontier, and the architecture still shows the border. The walk up through the Gardoš lanes to the tower takes fifteen minutes, costs nothing, and almost no visitor to Belgrade makes it.