The journey
Belgrade nights, Vojvodina cellars, and the partizan monuments of the Serbian interior.
Serbia is the most misunderstood country in the Balkans. In the West, it is still primarily associated with the wars of the 1990s. In Belgrade, it is associated with the best nightlife in Europe, a restaurant scene that outpunches its weight, and a cultural confidence that has survived everything the 20th century threw at it.
Seven nights allows time to understand both: the country's difficult history and its extraordinary present. Belgrade's brutalist housing estates and its floating river bars. The medieval monasteries of the Šumadija. The partizan monuments of the Serbian interior, among the finest memorial architecture in Europe.
Day by day
The itinerary
Belgrade
Belgrade — The City That Refuses to Sleep
Belgrade is built on a cliff above the confluence of the Sava and the Danube — a position of such strategic importance that it has been destroyed and rebuilt 40 times in its history. Two days: Kalemegdan fortress, the Pobednik monument, New Belgrade's socialist housing blocks, the House of Flowers. Evenings in Savamala.
Vojvodina
Novi Sad & Sremski Karlovci — The Wines of the North
Novi Sad: the cultural capital of Vojvodina, host of the EXIT Festival, its Petrovaradin fortress visible from every angle of the city. Then to Sremski Karlovci, the Habsburg baroque town where the Peace of Karlowitz was signed in 1699, surrounded by vineyards producing Bermet — the wine Titanic had in its cellars.
Central Serbia
Partizan Monuments — Kosmaj & Kadinjača
South into the Serbian interior, to two of the country's greatest partizan memorials: the Kosmaj monument (a stone star, Vojin Bakić, 1971) and the Kadinjača complex (where the Workers' Battalion was annihilated in 1941, now a landscape of extraordinary memorial architecture).
Central Serbia
Kragujevac — The Šumarice Memorial
Kragujevac: where German forces executed 2,794 civilians in October 1941, including an entire school class with their teachers. The Šumarice Memorial Park, designed by multiple Yugoslav sculptors, is one of the most moving memorial landscapes in Europe. A day of necessary gravity.
Western Serbia
Zlatibor & Mokra Gora — Mountain Serbia
The Zlatibor plateau: mountain air, traditional Serbian village life, the Sirogojno Open Air Museum. Then to Mokra Gora and the Šargan Eight narrow-gauge railway — Kusturica's Drvengrad is nearby, for those who are interested in the cinema.
Belgrade
Belgrade — Farewell
Return to Belgrade. Final afternoon: the Skadarlija bohemian quarter, the National Museum with its collection of Serbian medieval art. Farewell dinner.
