Bad Vibes at the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade.

Nikola Tesla Museum, Belgrade.

August 2019.

I like to think of myself as a broadly positive traveller. The sort who looks, instinctively, for what a place offers rather than what it lacks. That doesn’t mean ignoring the negatives—just meeting them with a degree of balance, a willingness to understand before judging.

But every now and then, a visit unsettles that approach. Unfortunately, my experience at the Nikola Tesla Museum was one such occasion.

What a brilliant and fascinating man Nikola Tesla was. A fiercely intelligent and single-minded inventor, he designed and patented the world’s first alternating-current (AC) electrical system—work that would go on to shape the modern world in ways few could have imagined at the time.

He also developed the Tesla Coil, an electrical resonant transformer circuit that remains fundamental to our understanding of electromagnetism. He played a central role in the creation of the first hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls. And, as some mischievous historians like to suggest, his early research may even have helped lay the groundwork for the neon sign.

Nikola Tesla Museum, Belgrade.

Moreover, Tesla’s life was marked by considerable adversity. As a teenager, he survived a severe bout of cholera that left him bedridden for more than nine months. Later, as a young man pursuing his early inventions, he endured periods of extreme poverty, at one point working as a ditch digger for just two dollars a day.

Yet even then, his intellectual appetite remained undiminished. In what little free time he had, Tesla continued to refine his knowledge of the eight languages he spoke—Serbian, English, Czech, German, French, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.

Naturally, I was excited at the prospect of visiting a museum dedicated to both the man and his work.

As one of Belgrade’s most popular attractions, Sladja and I assumed it would be straightforward to secure tickets in advance. In practice, however, this wasn’t possible. In fact, there was no option to book online, nor could tickets be purchased ahead of time at the museum itself.

Instead, entry was organised solely through scheduled guided tours, with visitors expected to arrive shortly before the start time and pay on the spot. Payment, we discovered, was accepted in cash only in Serbian dinars.

A Disappointing Experience.

It was an exceptionally hot afternoon when we set off for the museum on foot. Even so, we arrived early, mindful of its popularity and the likelihood of a crowd.

What we found, however, was a locked entrance and a line of waiting visitors stretching along the balcony and down the staircase towards the compound gate. The heat was intense, and with no shade to speak of outside the museum, many had retreated across the road, gathering beneath a small cluster of trees in search of some relief.

Unsure where best to wait, we decided to join the queue outside the building. There was a noticeable air of confusion. People were asking whether the next tour would be in Serbian or English, why the doors remained closed, and whether it might be possible to step inside, even briefly, to escape the heat.

A few minutes before the tour was due to begin, the doors finally opened. A young man stepped out and began issuing clipped instructions in a raised voice.

“Step back from the doors!”
“No, we don’t have toilets here, move back!”

This immediately altered the atmosphere. Conversations fell away, and the uncertainty that had been quietly circulating in the queue gave way to something more subdued.

Tall and robust, with a serious, unsmiling expression, he carried himself with an air of impatience that was difficult to ignore. It may have been the pressure of managing a crowd in difficult conditions, but the effect was unmistakable: any sense of welcome was notably absent.

Nikola Tesla Museum, Belgrade.

Meanwhile, those waiting across the road began to drift back towards the entrance, merging with the main queue. This appeared to heighten the tension at the door.

“Ten people at a time!” the man called out, his voice carrying clearly above the crowd. He repeated his instructions for everyone to stand back, as though anticipating a surge that, in reality, never seemed likely to materialise.

In due course, visitors were admitted in small groups, ten at a time. When our turn came, Sladja was counted in as number ten, and I was asked to wait behind. I explained that we were together and would be paying for two tickets. There was a brief pause—an exchange that felt more strained than it needed to be—before he rudely waved me through to join her.

In the small lobby, we paid for our tickets in cash to a woman whose manner was just as brisk and unwelcoming. From there, we followed the crowd into a compact, airless room that doubled as a theatre. The atmosphere inside was very strained. A baby cried somewhere near the front, while a man nearby was quietly but urgently telling his wife that he needed to step out of the building in search of a toilet.

By the time everyone had been ushered in, the room close to full capacity. However, there were not enough chairs, so a number of visitors stood along the walls or clustered at the back. Eventually, the lights dimmed and a short introductory film began—a ten-minute overview of Tesla’s life. Its presentation was functional and somewhat dated, lacking the sense of occasion one might have hoped for.

Nikola Tesla Museum, Belgrade.

After the film, the guide introduced himself and led us into a second, similarly compact room. There, we gathered around a series of replica Tesla inventions. Encouragingly, his manner was warm and engaging, a welcome shift in tone. His English accent was quite thick, which at times made parts of the explanation a little difficult to follow. But by this point I was simply relieved to be in a more relaxed and personable setting.

It was genuinely enjoyable to follow the guide’s demonstrations of a few of Tesla’s inventions—particularly the coil, with its arcs of blue sparks that drew audible murmurs of appreciation from the room. For the first time since arriving, the atmosphere began to soften, and something closer to genuine engagement took hold.

And that was, more or less, the extent of the guided tour. As for the exhibition itself, I had been expecting a more detailed sense of Tesla’s life and its different phases—his early years, his difficult period working under Thomas Edison, the financial hardships he endured, and his eventual emergence as one of the world’s most gifted engineers.

Instead, the displays are somewhat loosely arranged: a collection of personal items and curiosities that, while interesting in isolation, never quite came together into a clear narrative.

Still, some of the museum’s pieces were undeniably fascinating. One that caught my attention was an original Austrian Military Cross of Merit, awarded to Nikola’s father, Milutin Tesla. There was, however, little accompanying information, and I found myself having to fill in the gaps online afterwards.

Austrian Military Cross of Merit.

It felt like a missed opportunity. Milutin Tesla was, by all accounts, a remarkable figure in his own right—a former soldier who later became a priest in the Eastern Orthodox Church. A gifted mathematician, and, according to historians, a man also fluent in an extraordinary number of languages.

It was through his service, both military and spiritual, that he came to receive one of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s more distinguished honours.

Elsewhere, I came across one of Nikola’s old suits, displayed alongside a hat and a walking cane. The accompanying label was brief—simply noting that these were original items of clothing worn by Tesla, and little more.

It was only later, quite by chance, that I discovered the museum’s website offered additional context. There, I learned that Tesla had many of his suits tailored at the renowned New York workshop James W. Bell & Sons. What’s more, I discovered that while Tesla had a fondness for hats—often having them embroidered with his initials—he would almost always remove them when being photographed.

I also paused at a memorial plaque from the Niagara Falls Power Company, a quiet but significant reminder of Tesla’s work in harnessing alternating current. The plant he helped design is often seen as a decisive moment in his long-running rivalry with Thomas Edison, whose competing direct current system had once dominated the field.

Of course, others became embroiled in what historians later dubbed the War of the Currents—a complex and at times fiercely contested chapter in the history of electricity.

Niagra Falls Power Co.

Perhaps my favourite of the museum’s exhibits was a letter from Tesla to the American Art Nouveau artist and designer Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Dated April 11th, 1914, it captures a moment of quiet frustration, with Tesla expressing his disappointment at the lack of progress on a shared project. Quite what that collaboration entailed remains unclear, and the museum offered nothing in the way of further context.

Next, I paused to admire a copy of a portrait by the wonderfully named Princess Elisabeth Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy. The Hungarian artist painted Tesla in New York in 1916—the only time he sat for such a work. Rendered under a cool, blue-toned light, the piece later became known as The Blue Portrait.

The final exhibit is, in many ways, the most striking—particularly as I hadn’t realised that the museum houses Nikola Tesla’s ashes.

They lie contained within a spherical golden urn, presented to the museum in 1952 by his nephew and heir, Sava Kosanović. The location of Tesla’s remains has long been a matter of debate in Serbia. In 2017, the issue resurfaced amid the possibility of legal action from the Serbian Orthodox Church. Their argument is that his ashes would be far better off placed among other national figures in Church of Saint Sava, rather than displayed in a museum setting.

Sava Kosanović (1894–1956).

It remains a sensitive question—one that sits quietly beneath the surface of the exhibition itself. For now, however, the urn remains where it has long been, at the heart of the museum that Kosanović was instrumental in establishing.

As we made our way back out into the sunshine, I noticed the man from earlier—the one overseeing the queues—standing in quiet conversation with a woman who appeared to be the manager. Unable to let the experience pass, I approached them and raised my concerns about the disrespectful way the museum had treated visitors that afternoon.

Sadly, the lady refused to accept that his behaviour had been unacceptable. “With this location, we cannot do better,” she replied, referring to the shambolic ticketing system. And with that, the exchange ended as quickly as it had begun.

That evening, back at our Airbnb, Sladja and I went online to read through the museum’s TripAdvisor reviews. Unsurprisingly, many echoed a similar sense of frustration and disappointment, with dozens of visitors describing experiences much like our own.

What a pity. For one of Serbia’s most prominent attractions, there is clearly the potential for something far more welcoming and engaging.

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