Belgrade
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| The City of Belgrade Град Београд Grad Beograd |
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| Coordinates: | |||
| Country |  Serbia |
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| District | City of Belgrade | ||
| Municipalities | 17 | ||
| Founded | 269 B.C. | ||
| City rights | 150 A.D. | ||
| Unified | 1918 | ||
| Government | |||
| - Mayor | Dragan Đilas (DS) | ||
| - Deputy Mayor | Milan Krkobabić (PUPS) | ||
| - Ruling parties | DS/G17+/SPS-PUPS/LDP | ||
| Area | |||
| - City | 3,222.68 km2 (1,244.3 sq mi) | ||
| - Urban | 359.96 km2 (139 sq mi) | ||
| Elevation [1] | 117 m (384 ft) | ||
| Population (2007)[2] | |||
| - City | 1,630,000 | ||
| - Density | 530.61/km2 (1,374.3/sq mi) | ||
| - Urban | 1,182,000 | ||
| - Urban Density | 3,560.95/km2 (9,222.8/sq mi) | ||
| - Demonym | Belgrader | ||
| Time zone | CET (UTC+1) | ||
| - Summer (DST) | CEST (UTC+2) | ||
| Postal code | 11000 | ||
| Area code(s) | (+381) 11 | ||
| Car plates | BG | ||
| Website: www.beograd.rs | |||
Belgrade (Serbian: Београд, Beograd 
listen (help·info)) is the capital and largest city of Serbia. The city lies on two international waterways, at the confluence of the Sava and Danube in north central Serbia, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkan Peninsula. With a population of 1 630 000 (official estimate 2007)[3], Belgrade is the largest city in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, second largest city on the Danube river[4] and the fourth largest in Southeastern Europe, after Istanbul, Athens, and Bucharest.
One of the oldest cities of Europe, with archeological finds tracing settlements as early as 6th millennium BC,[5][6] Belgrade's wider city area was the birthplace of the largest prehistoric culture[7] of Europe, the Vinča culture.[8] The city was discovered by the Greeks,[9] founded and named by the Celts (White City, name it still bears),[10] awarded city rights by the Romans[11] before it was permanently settled by White Serbs from the 600s onwards. As a strategic key, the city was battled over in 140 separate wars since the ancient period by countless armies of the East and West.[12] In medieval times, it was in the possession of Byzantine, Frankish, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Serbian rulers. In 1521 Belgrade was conquered by the Ottomans and became the seat of the Pashaluk of Belgrade, as the principal city of Ottoman Europe[13] and among the largest European cities.[14] Frequently passing from Ottoman to Austrian rule, the status of Serbian capital would be regained only in 1841, after the Serbian revolution. Northern Belgrade, though, remained an Austrian outpost until the breakup of Austria-Hungary in 1918. The united city then became the capital of several incarnations of Yugoslavia, up to 2006, when Serbia became an independent state again.
Belgrade has the status of a separate territorial unit in Serbia, with its own autonomous city government.[15] Its territory is divided into 17 municipalities, each having its own local council.[16] It covers 3.6% of the territory of Serbia, and 24% of the country's population lives in the city.[17] Belgrade is the central economic hub of Serbia, and the capital of Serbian culture, education and science.
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[edit] Geography
Belgrade lies 116.75 metres (383 ft) above sea level and is located at confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers, at coordinates 44°49'14" North, 20°27'44" East. The historical core of Belgrade, today's Kalemegdan, is on the right bank of the rivers. Since the 19th century, the city has been expanding to the south and east, and after World War II, New Belgrade was built on the Sava's left bank, merging Belgrade with Zemun. Smaller, chiefly residential communities across the Danube, like Krnjača and Ovča, also merged with the city. The city has an urban area of 360 square kilometres (139 sq mi), while together with its metropolitan area it covers 3,223 km² (1,244.4 sq mi). Throughout history, Belgrade has been a major crossroad between the West and the Orient.[18]
On the right bank of the Sava, central Belgrade has hilly terrain, while the highest point of Belgrade proper is Torlak hill at 303 m (994 ft). The mountains of Avala (511 m (1,677 ft)) and Kosmaj (628 m (2,060 ft)) lie south of the city.[19] Across the Sava and Danube, the land is mostly flat, consisting of alluvial plains and loessial plateaus.
[edit] Climate
| Climate chart for Belgrade | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| temperatures in °C precipitation totals in mm source: Climate-Charts.com |
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Imperial conversion
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Belgrade has a moderate continental climate. The year-round average temperature is 11.7 °C (53.1 °F), while the hottest month is July, with an average temperature of 22.1 °C (71.8 °F). There are, on average, 31 days a year when the temperature is above 30°C, and 95 days when the temperature is above 25°C. Belgrade receives about 700 millimetres (27.56 in) of precipitation a year. The average annual number of sunny hours is 2,096. The sunniest months are July and August, with an average of about 10 sunny hours a day, while December and January are the gloomiest, with an average of 2–2.3 sunny hours a day.[20] The highest officially recorded temperature in Belgrade was +43,1 °C,[21] while on the other end, the lowest temperature was -26.2 °C on January 10, 1893.[22]
[edit] History
- See also: Timeline of Belgrade history
[edit] Ancient city
The Neolithic Starčevo and Vinča cultures existed in or near Belgrade and dominated the Balkans (as well as parts of Central Europe and Asia Minor) about 7,000 years ago.[23][24] Some scholars believe that the prehistoric Vinča signs represent the earliest known form of alphabet.[25] Many centuries later, the Greek Argonauts have discovered the river Sava in ancient Belgrade (which they named Cauliac) while sailing from the Black Sea upstream (Appolonius).[9] Settled in the fourth century BC by a Celtic tribe, the Scordisci, the city's recorded name was Singidūn, before becoming the romanized Singidunum in the first century AD. In the mid 2nd century, the city was proclaimed a municipium by the Roman authorities, evolving into a full fledged colonia (highest class Roman city) by the end of the century.[11] The first Christian Emperor of Rome was born in modern Serbia: Constantine I known as Constantine the Great (Naissus, 280 A.D.[26]) and a Roman Emperor was born in Belgrade, Jovian, the restorer of Christianity, Flavius Iovianus, (Singidunum, 332 A.D.[27]) Jovian reestablished Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, ending the brief revival of ism under his predecessor Julian. In 395 AD, the site passed to the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire.[24] Across the Sava from Singidunum was the Celtic city of Taurunum (Zemun), that through Roman and Byzantine times shared a common fate with its "twin brother" (the two cities were connected by a bridge).[28]
[edit] Middle Ages
Singidunum was occupied and often ravaged by successive invasions of Huns, Sarmatians, Gepids, Ostrogoths and Avars before the arrival of the Slavs around 630 AD. It served as the center of the Gepidean Kingdom in the early 500s, before being taken by the Avars. When the Avars were finally destroyed in the 9th century by the Frankish Kingdom, it fell back to Byzantine rule, whilst Taurunum became part of the Frankish realm (and was renamed to Malevilla).[29] At the same time (around 878), the first record of the Slavic name Beligrad has appeared, during the rule of the First Bulgarian Empire. For about four centuries, the city remained a battleground between the Byzantine Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary and the First Bulgarian Empire.[30] The city hosted the armies of the First and the Second Crusade;[31] while passing through during the Third Crusade, Frederick Barbarossa and his 190,000 crusaders saw Belgrade in ruins.[32] Capital of the Kingdom of Syrmia since 1284, the first Serbian king to rule over Belgrade was Dragutin, who received it as a gift from his father-in-law, the Hungarian king Stephen V.[33] Following the Battle of Maritsa in 1371, and the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, the Serbian Empire began to crumble as the Ottoman Empire conquered its southern territory.[34][35] The north, however, resisted through the Serbian Despotate, which had Belgrade as its capital. The city flourished under despot Stefan Lazarević, son of the famous Serbian ruler Lazar Hrebeljanović. Lazarević built a castle with a citadel and towers, of which only the Despot's tower and the west wall remain. He also refortified the city's ancient walls, allowing the Despotate to resist the Ottomans for almost 70 years. During this time, Belgrade was a haven for the many Balkan peoples fleeing from Ottoman rule, and is thought to have had a population of some 40–50,000.[33]
In 1427, Stefan's successor Đurađ Branković had to return Belgrade to the Hungarians, and the capital was moved to Smederevo. During his reign, the Ottomans captured most of the Serbian Despotate, unsuccessfully besieging Belgrade first in 1440[31] and again in 1456.[36] As it presented an obstacle to their further advance into Central Europe, over 100,000 Ottoman solders[37] have launched the famous Siege of Belgrade, where the Christian army under John Hunyadi successfully defended the city from the Ottomans, wounding the Sultan Mehmed II[38] This battle "decided the fate of Christendom";[39] the noon bell ordered by Pope Callixtus III commemorates the victory throughout the Christian world to this day.[40][31]
[edit] Turkish conquest / Austrian invasions
It wasn't until August 28, 1521 (7 decades after the last siege), that the fort was finally captured by Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent and his 250,000 soldiers; subsequently, most of the city was razed to the ground and its entire Christian population (including Serbs, Hungarians, Greeks, Armenians etc) was deported to Istanbul,[31] to the area since known as the Belgrade forest.[41] Belgrade was made the seat of the district (Sanjak), attracting new inhabitants—Turks, Armenians, Greeks, Ragusan traders, and others, and there was peace for the next 150 years. The city became the second largest Ottoman town in Europe at over 100,000 people, surpassed only by Constantinople.[37] Turkish rule also introduced Ottoman architecture to Belgrade and many mosques were built, increasing the city's Oriental influences.[42] In 1594, a major Serb rebellion was crushed by the Turks. Further on, Albanian- born Grand vizier Sinan Pasha[43] ordered the relics of Saint Sava to be publicly torched on the Vračar plateau; more recently, the Temple of Saint Sava was built to commemorate this event.[44] In retaliation for the rebellion, most of the city's population was deported to Istanbul; the Belgrade Forest is, centuries on, still named after those Serbian refugees.[45]
Occupied by Austria three times (1688–1690, 1717–1739, 1789–1791), headed by the Holy Roman Princes Maximilian of Bavaria and Eugene of Savoy,[46] respectively, Belgrade was quickly recaptured and substantially razed each time by the Ottomans.[42] During this period, the city was affected by the two Great Serbian Migrations, in which hundreds of thousands of Serbs, led by their patriarchs, retreated together with the Austrians into the Habsburg Empire, settling in today's Vojvodina and Slavonia.[47]
[edit] Serbian capital
During the First Serbian Uprising, the Serbian revolutionaries held the city from January 8, 1807 until 1813, when it was retaken by the Ottomans.[48] After the Second Serbian Uprising in 1815, Serbia reached semi-independence, which was formally recognized by the Porte in 1830.[49] In 1841, Prince Mihailo Obrenović moved the capital from Kragujevac to Belgrade.[50][51]
With the Principality's full independence in 1878, and its transformation into the Kingdom of Serbia in 1882, Belgrade once again became a key city in the Balkans, and developed rapidly.[48][52] Nevertheless, conditions in Serbia as a whole remained those of an overwhelmingly agrarian country, even with the opening of a railway to Niš, Serbia's second city, and in 1900 the capital had only 69,100 inhabitants.[53] Yet by 1905 the population had grown to more than 80,000, and by the outbreak of World War I in 1914, it had surpassed the 100,000 citizens, not counting Zemun which then belonged to Austria-Hungary.[54]
The first-ever projection of motion pictures in the Balkans and Central Europe was held in Belgrade in June 1896 by Andre Carr, a representative of the Lumière brothers. He shot the first motion pictures of Belgrade in the next year; however, they have not been preserved.[55]
[edit] World War I / Unified city
| "Kalemegdan is the prettiest and most courageous piece of optimism I know." —Rebecca West in 1913[56] |
Gavrilo Princip's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 triggered World War I. Most of the subsequent Balkan offensives occurred near Belgrade. Austro-Hungarian monitors shelled Belgrade on July 29, 1914, and it was taken by the Austro-Hungarian Army under General Oskar Potiorek on November 30. On December 15, it was re-taken by Serbian troops under Marshal Radomir Putnik. After a prolonged battle which destroyed much of the city, between October 6 and October 9, 1915, Belgrade fell to German and Austro-Hungarian troops commanded by Field Marshal August von Mackensen on October 9, 1915. The city was liberated by Serbian and French troops on November 5, 1918, under the command of Marshal Louis Franchet d'Espérey of France and Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia. Decimated as the front-line city, for a while it was Subotica[57] that was the largest city in the Kingdom; still, Belgrade grew rapidly, retrieving its position by the early 1920s.
After the war, Belgrade became the capital of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. The Kingdom was split into banovinas, and Belgrade, together with Zemun and Pančevo, formed a separate administrative unit.[58]
During this period, the city experienced faster growth and significant modernisation. Belgrade's population grew to 239,000 by 1931 (incorporating the town of Zemun, formerly in Austria-Hungary), and 320,000 by 1940. The population growth rate between 1921 and 1948 averaged 4.08% a year.[59] In 1927, Belgrade's first airport opened, and in 1929, its first radio station began broadcasting. The Pančevo Bridge, which crosses the Danube, was opened in 1935.[60]
[edit] World War II
On March 25, 1941, the government of regent Crown Prince Paul signed the Tripartite Pact, joining the Axis powers in an effort to stay out of the Second World War. This was immediately followed by mass protests in Belgrade and a military coup d'état led by Air Force commander General Dušan Simović, who proclaimed King Peter II to be of age to rule the realm. Consequently, the city was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe on April 6, 1941, and 24,000 people were killed. [61][62] Yugoslavia was then invaded by German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian forces, and suburbs as far east as Zemun, in the Belgrade metropolitan area, were incorporated into a Nazi puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia. Belgrade became the seat of another puppet government, headed by General Milan Nedić.
During the summer and fall of 1941, in reprisal for guerrilla attacks, Germans carried out several massacres of Belgrade citizens; in particular, members of the Jewish community were subject to mass shootings at the order of General Franz Böhme, the German Military Governor of Serbia. Böhme rigorously enforced the rule that for every German killed, 100 Serbs or Jews would be shot.[63]
Belgrade was bombed by the Allies on April 16[citation needed], 1944, killing about 1,600 people. Both this and the earlier Luftwaffe bombing fell on the Orthodox Christian Easter. Most of the city remained under German occupation until October 20, 1944, when it was liberated by Communist Yugoslav Partisans and the Red Army. On November 29, 1945, Marshal Josip Broz Tito proclaimed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia in Belgrade (later to be renamed to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on April 7, 1963).
[edit] Communist Yugoslavia
During the post-war period, Belgrade grew rapidly as the capital of the renewed Yugoslavia, developing as a major industrial centre.[52] In 1958, Belgrade's first television station began broadcasting. In 1961, the conference of Non-Aligned Countries was held in Belgrade under Tito's chairmanship. In 1968, major student protests against Tito led to several street clashes between students and the police, ending with Tito's famous saying, "Students are right!". In March 1972, Belgrade was at the centre of the last major outbreak of smallpox in Europe, which, through enforced quarantine and mass vaccination, was contained by late May.[64]
[edit] Post-communist history
On March 9, 1991, massive demonstrations led by Vuk Drašković were held in the city against Slobodan Milošević.[65] According to various media outlets, there were between 100,000 and 150,000 people on the streets.[66] Two people were killed, 203 injured and 108 arrested during the protests, and later that day tanks were deployed onto the streets to restore order.[67] Further protests were held in Belgrade from November 1996 to February 1997 against the same government after alleged electoral fraud at local elections.[68] These protests brought Zoran Đinđić to power, the first mayor of Belgrade since World War II who did not belong to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia or its later offshoot, the Socialist Party of Serbia.[69]
The NATO bombing during the Kosovo War in 1999 caused substantial damage to the city. Among the sites bombed were the buildings of several ministries, the RTS building, which killed 16 technicians, several hospitals, the Jugoslavija Hotel, the Central Committee building, the Avala TV Tower, and the Chinese embassy.[70]
After the elections in 2000, Belgrade was the site of major street protests, with over half a million people on the streets (800,000 by police estimates, over 1,000,000 according to Misha Glenny). These demonstrations resulted in the ousting of president Milošević.[71][72]
[edit] Names through history
Belgrade has had many different names throughout history, and in nearly all languages could be translated into modern english "white city" (for slavic languages compare Belgorod, a Russian city also called white city).
| Name | Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| Singidūn(on) | Named by the Celtic tribe of the Scordisci; dūn(on) means 'lodgment, enclosure, fort'; Singi probably meaning white, 279 BC[73][10] | |
| Singidūnum | Romans conquered the city and Romanised the Celtic name | |
| Beograd, Београд | Slavic name first mentioned in 878 as Beligrad in the letter of Pope John VIII to Boris of Bulgaria which means "White city / white fortress".[74] | |
| Alba Graeca, "Alba" may be derived from the Latin word for "white" | Latin | |
| Alba Bulgarica | Latin name during the period of Bulgarian rule over the city[74] | |
| Weißenburg and Griechisch-Weißenburg | German translation. Modern German is Belgrad.[74] | |
| Castelbianco | Italian translation[74] | |
| Nandoralba | In medieval Hungary up to the 14th century[74] | |
| Nándorfehérvár, Landorfehérvár | In medieval Hungary, means White Knight's City. Modern Hungarian is Belgrád.[74] | |
| Veligrad(i)on or Velegrada/Βελέγραδα | Byzantine name. Modern Greek is Veligradi (Βελιγράδι). | |
| Dar Al Jihad | Arabic name during Ottoman empire. | |
| Prinz-Eugenstadt | Planned German name of the city after the World War II, had it remained a part of the Third Reich. The city was to be named after Prince Eugene of Savoy, the Austrian military commander who conquered the city from the Turks in 1717.[75] |
[edit] Government and politics
Belgrade is a separate territorial unit in Serbia, with its own autonomous city government.[15] The post of mayor was held by the Democratic Party member Nenad Bogdanović from 2004 and until his death on September 27, 2007. The first mayor to be democratically elected after World War II was Dr. Zoran Đinđić, in 1996. Mayors were also elected democratically prior to the war.
The Civic Assembly of Belgrade has 110 councilors who are elected for four-year terms. The current majority parties are the same as in the Parliament of Serbia (Democratic Party-G17 Plus and Socialist Party of Serbia-Party of United Pensioners of Serbia with the support of Liberal Democratic Party), and in similar proportions, with the Serbian Radical Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia-New Serbia in opposition.[76]
[edit] Municipalities
- See also: Subdivisions of Belgrade, List of Belgrade neighborhoods and suburbs, and List of former and proposed municipalities of Belgrade
The city is divided into 17 municipalities.[16]
Most of the municipalities are situated on the southern side of the Danube and Sava rivers, in the Šumadija region. Three municipalities (Zemun, Novi Beograd, and Surčin) are on the northern bank of the Sava, in the Syrmia region, and the municipality of Palilula, spanning the Danube, is in both the Šumadija and Banat regions.
| Name | Area (km²) | Population (1991) | Population (2002) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barajevo | 213 | 20,846 | 24,641 | |
| Čukarica | 156 | 150,257 | 168,508 | |
| Grocka | 289 | 65,735 | 75,466 | |
| Lazarevac | 384 | 57,848 | 58,511 | |
| Mladenovac | 339 | 54,517 | 52,490 | |
| Novi Beograd | 41 | 218,633 | 217,773 | |
| Obrenovac | 411 | 67,654 | 70,975 | |
| Palilula | 451 | 150,208 | 155,902 | |
| Rakovica | 31 | 96,300 | 99,000 | |
| Savski Venac | 14 | 45,961 | 42,505 | |
| Sopot | 271 | 19,977 | 20,390 | |
| Stari Grad | 5 | 68,552 | 55,543 | |
| Surčin | 285 | Part of Zemun municipality until 2004. |
55,000 (est.) | |
| Voždovac | 148 | 156,373 | 151,768 | |
| Vračar | 3 | 67,438 | 58,386 | |
| Zemun | 154 | 176,158 | 136,645 | |
| Zvezdara | 32 | 135,694 | 132,621 | |
| TOTAL | 3227 | 1,552,151 | 1,576,124 | |
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[edit] Demographics
- See also: Historical population of Belgrade
According to the Census 2002, the main ethnic groups in Belgrade are Serbs (1,480 045), Montenegrins (25,000), Roma (19,000), Croats (7,000), Macedonians (8,372), and Muslims by nationality (4,617).[77] Recent polls (2007) show that Belgrade's population has increased by 400,000 in just five years since the last official Census was undertaken.[78] As of August 2, 2008, the city's Institute for Informatics and Statistics has registered 1,542,773 eligible voters, which confirms that Belgrade's population has risen dramatically since the 2002 Census, as the number of the registered voters has almost surpassed the entire population of the city six years before.[79] The official estimate for the end of 2007, according to the City's Institute for Informatics and Statistics, was 1,630,000.[3]
Belgrade is home to many ethnicities from all over the former Yugoslavia.[2] Many people came to the city as economic migrants from smaller towns and the countryside, while thousands arrived as refugees from Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, as a result of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.[80] Between 10,000 and 20,000 [81] Chinese are estimated to live in Belgrade; they began immigrating in the mid-1990s. Blok 70 in New Belgrade is known locally as the Chinese quarter.[82][83] Belgrade is also reported to have many Indonesian Indonesian people. [84] Many Middle Easterners, mainly from Syria, Iran, Jordan and Iraq, arrived in order to pursue their studies during the 1970s and 1980s, and have remained and started families in the city.[85][86] Afghani and Iraqi Kurdish refugees are among some of the recent arrivals from the Middle East.[87]
Although there are several historic religious communities in Belgrade, the religious makeup of t