More Cool Spots Around Belgrade.

More Cool Spots Around Belgrade.

August 2019 – January 2024.

Following on from my recent article, Cool Spots Around Belgrade, it’s time to mop up my final collection of underrated spots from across the Serbian capital. So come with me for a tour of More Cool Spots Around Belgrade.

Sladja and I have spent countless hours exploring the city on foot. Along the way, between sights, there were so many buildings worth pausing at. Most of these structures certainly couldn’t be described as tourist attractions. But they caught our attention nonetheless, each one with its own stories to tell.

Let’s start with an exceptionally pretty building known as Captain Misa’s Mansion. Built in 1863, the structure had been intended as a gift from the wealthy salt merchant Miša Anastasijević to his youngest daughter Sara who was marrying into royalty.

However, in what some historians describe as “a mysterious change of heart” he instead gave the building to the city with the caveat that it only be used for educational purposes. Today it serves as the Faculty of Humanities and makes a handsome backdrop to the city’s annual tulip display every spring.

More Cool Spots Around Belgrade.

There’s another fine building right next to Captain Miša’s Mansion. The Faculty of Philology, dating back to 1808, holds a lot of memories for Sladja. Indeed this is where she took her modern language classes and countless lectures on Spanish literature, English, latin and psychology.

Another educational institution that’s easy on the eye is King Peter I Karadjordjevic Elementary School. Founded in 1717, it is the oldest school in the city designed by Jelisaveta Načić, widely recognised as Serbia’s first female architect. 

The school established the country’s first dedicated Gymnastics Society (you may recall the amusing painting depicting this at The National Museum in my last article). Furthermore, the country’s first specialist sports courses in disciplines such as boxing and fencing began here. Oh, and it was also the site of Serbia’s first official basketball match, which took place in October 1923.

Many of Belgrade’s lovely buildings are of course churches. For two of the very best, look no further than my articles on St. Mark’s and the Church of Saint Sava. If one also has time, I’d recommend popping your head into St. Michael’s Cathedral. Opened in 1840, this was the site of King Peter I’s coronation in 1904.

St. Michael’s Cathedral.

Today the church is hugely popular as a venue for weddings and baptisms, especially on weekends when it can be hard to even get a look inside. Thankfully we swung by on a weekday afternoon and had the interior all to ourselves.

The churchyard meanwhile although quite small, is wonderfully leafy. A fine place it seems to come and escape the city noise. Maybe do some reading.

On our way out we discovered a curious gravestone. It turned out to be the final resting place of a man called Vuk Karadžić, Serbia’s most famous philologist.

In fact, he created the first Serbian dictionary (1818) in the reformed new language. As a celebrated linguist too he was also known across Europe and was buddies with The Brothers Grimm. What a hoot.

Elsewhere, one of my favourite architectural gems is the Belgrade Cooperative, a former bank completed in 1907. Curiously, it opened with the specific intent to serve small businesses, craftsmen and low-wage workers. Membership and shareholding schemes began at just 1 dinar a week.

More Cool Spots Around Belgrade.

The bank eventually bit the dust in 1944 during the chaos of World War II. And yet, 75 years later, Sladja and I were able to waltz in right off the street and take a wander through its impressively renovated baroque and art nouveau interior.

Today a Michelin star restaurant, Salon 1905, has taken over what used to be the bank’s Ceremonial Hall. Online reviews vary wildly from the very impressed to the utterly outraged. From time to time dinner comes with live music.

That day we also stopped by the sales office of the controversial Belgrade Waterfront Project, which at that time had its main office in The Belgrade Cooperative. Unveiled in 2014, this humongous $3.5 billion project came about with the aim to regenerate the city’s neglected riverfront neighbourhoods.

But the project was riddled with criticism and outright fury right from its launch when the government struck a deal with a development group from Abu Dhabi that handed them the waterfront’s legal rights without so much as a cursory municipal referendum.

Moreover, protesters accused their government of abandoning Serbian history and culture. As mentioned in my recent article on Belgrade Street Art, dozens of historic buildings were demolished to make way for luxury high-rises.

The matter came to a bloody head one infamous night in April 2016 when protesters trying to protect a cluster of old buildings found themselves attacked by masked men wielding baseball bats. One of the protesters died in the incident.

More Cool Spots Around Belgrade.

Meanwhile, the many new upscale cafes, restaurants and swanky clothing stores remain well out of reach for the average Serb, whose monthly income stands at around 700 Euros a month.

Naturally we made sure to explore some of the waterfront that first summer. The entire stretch was undeniably run down, with just a cluster of half-hearted cafes and restaurants. Very few people were around to stroll down the badly-paved promenade, while in the background cranes clunked and workmen hammered at various workstations.

Nevertheless, we found a nice place to settle for some cold drinks; an arty joint called Sofa Restaurant.

The bar, as with many we saw that day, managed to stay in business for about another year. According to our research it marked itself as temporarily closed in September 2020 and has remained so ever since.

It’s definitely been interesting to see how the waterfront has developed these last 5 years. Every time we return to Belgrade we rediscover a district that is increasingly modern, cleaner and shinier with a mushrooming infrastructure that caters to the city’s new residents and their bulging wallets.

The Belgrade Waterfront.

Unfortunately, one can’t help but think of what had to be sacrificed in the name of progress. One such location was the Main Railway Station. Back in 2019 we paid a visit to the building, built in the classic style between 1882 and 1885.

The interior, which you could still enter back then, sat perfectly empty. This was due to the fact that the city’s other rail hub, Belgrade Centre Railway Station, had replaced it the previous summer. It was weird standing there looking at all the closed booths. Imagining how this was once a stop for the Orient Express and how kings and queens once boarded trains here.

Next to the main building, we got to see a very special steam locomotive. Amazingly, this was once part of President Tito’s iconic Blue Train that took him all around Europe during the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Known as the A JŽ class 11, it was made in Budapest at the legendary MÁVAG factory.

The Blue Train.

Historians reckon the train covered over 600.000 kilometres over its decades of service. From state visits to France and Poland to holidays on the coast of Croatia. And finally back to Belgrade from Slovenia carrying Tito’s coffin after his death in 1980. 

Nowadays the Main Railway Station sits locked up, though there are rumours that one day it’ll be turned into a museum. With no rail traffic to speak of, Sava Square soon became something of a dead zone. Until, that is, a striking monument sprang up in January 2021. Love it or hate it (and plenty hate it), this is the Monument of Stefan Nemanja.

Erected “in the name of Serbian history and honour”,  this uncompromising monument remembers the life of Stefan Nemanja, a Grand Prince of the 12th century affectionately tagged “The father of the Serbian people”. He stands on a beaten battle helmet, sword in hand, a nod to his service in decades of war against The Normans.

Under the statue, a network of panels depicts chapters of Nemanja’s life story. In addition to being a skilled fighter and wartime negotiator, he constructed and restored some of Serbia’s most historic and precious monasteries and churches. 

More Cool Spots Around Belgrade.

In the interests of providing balance, I should also point out an historic Belgrade building that has actually benefitted from The Belgrade Waterfront project. Take a look at Hotel Bristol, a Vienna Secession masterpiece dating back to 1912.

Photo courtesy of Marcin Szala.

Oozing with history, the hotel has played host to global icons, from British royalty and American Rockefellers to the Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. The Serbian folk singer Predrag Gojković Cune also began his illustrious career at the hotel as a live performer. After decades of neglect and deterioration, the hotel closed its doors in the summer of 2018.

Every time we’re in Belgrade we walk past Hotel Bristol. On our last visit in November 2023 the entire building was under scaffolding. That’s because the Abu Dhabi group behind the city’s rejuvenation projects has committed to reopening the old joint to its former grandeur.

Hotel Bristol.

However, the project was held up for more than a year over the 30 military personnel who’d been living in the building. In the end these so-called Bristol families managed to get rehoused in apartments under their own names. But only after an unsavoury saga involving hunger strikes and direct negotiations with Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić.

Photo courtesy of A.Milenković.

For one historic Belgrade building though there will be no restoration. Nor indeed is it likely to be demolished. Rather, it stands as a grisly testament to the devastation of war. Located on Nemanjina Street, this is the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defence building.

Completed in 1965 and considered a masterpiece of post-war architecture, the building was all but destroyed during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia on the 30th of April 1999. Luckily nobody was inside at the time. The damage was severe, but it was actually a second bombing on the 8th of May that truly sealed its fate. Today it has a protected status as a cultural monument. 

Before signing off, let me bring you two of Belgrade’s most significant bridges. Both of which are well worth a walk for some fine river and city views.

First up this is Branko’s Bridge, which connects central Belgrade to New Belgrade. Finished in 1956, it replaced the iconic (and far more handsome) King Alexander Bridge, which the Germans destroyed in World War II.

More Cool Spots Around Belgrade.

The bridge takes its name from the romantic poet Branko Radičević. Furthermore, this where the beloved Serbian writer Branko Ćopić committed suicide by throwing himself off the bridge in 1984. Since then a number of locals have ended their lives here. Which is certainly a sobering thought as you gaze over the Sava at the city skyline.

The other bridge I wanna share is the Old Sava Bridge, opened in 1942. As one of the symbols of Belgrade, there was public uproar when a story came to light that the government was planning to demolish it in order to build another.

For once it appears that people power made a difference. After much toing and froing plans to destroy it have been shelved and the Old Sava Bridge lives to see another year. So if you’re in Belgrade why not include a crossing in your itinerary.

Like this? Check out my many articles from across Belgrade.

You may also enjoy my pieces from all over Serbia.

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