Visit this underrated European city before it becomes the next big thing
But all that is good news, because it means Belgrade has some of Europe's lowest costs and fewest crowds. Tourist visitors to all of Serbia hover just over two million; neighbouring Croatia attracts ten times as many.
Get there now before Belgrade becomes the next trendy European getaway. The Serbian capital is booming, its inhabitants ambitious and defiant of negative stereotypes. You'll get new perspectives on an old continent, sights without queues, gritty history, and throbbing contemporary energy.
Belgrade is one of Europe's oldest permanently inhabited capital cities but has never been tranquil. Buildings are pockmarked by bombing from its latest conflict following the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
A lot of architectural history has been erased, and Belgrade doesn't have access to European Union restoration money, yet in places is graced with unexpectedly elegant neoclassical streets and squares.
The main monuments are its ruined Serbian-Ottoman-Hapsburg fortress and whopping Saint Sava Temple, the country's triumphant new expression of Serbian Orthodoxy. Its interior, encased in glittering gold mosaics, is stunning.
Those of a certain age will also appreciate the House of Flowers, mausoleum of Josip Broz Tito, the Yugoslav president who died in 1980. Its architecture and exhibits are a throwback to the 1970s, when socialism and the Iron Curtain preoccupied the news cycle.
But this perennial comeback city feels more about the future these days. Get walking, get talking to locals, get eating, and enjoy the energy and enthusiasms of this buzzing city.
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