belgrade

 Here are some prices from taxi drivers in Belgrade.It can help you organizing your budget when wisiting Belgrade.

taxibelgrade.com fancy one

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Surcin Airport (Belgrade) - Center 15/20 €

Belgrade - Nis 140 €
Belgrade - Novi Sad 60 €

For all other prices you can contact as via phone or e-mail:

Tel:+381 (0) 646311063

belgradetaxi.com

Beware!! - As anywhere in Eastern Europe if you are a foreigner (and sometimes even if you are not), taxi drivers may try to overcharge you and it is smart to check the following before you hail a taxi in Belgrade:

Every Belgrade taxi company has to have 2 signs: a company unique sign and a smaller blue sign with 4 white numbers - a unique number of each vehicle of Belgrade taxi. If you catch a taxi without the second sign - chances are that it's illegal that the driver will try to rip you off.

The average fare around the broader center should not be higher than 500-700 dinars (300 for short rides), and it should always be by the meter - do not agree to a settled price. A common scheme is that a taxi driver demands the meter charge per person - obviously this is illegal and don't accept it. However, if they ask for an additional nominal fee for your luggage (50-100 dinars), that is allowed and it's not a scheme to rip you off.

 “Belgrade Alternative Guide” represents a group of students from Belgrade who came together around the idea of showing their capital city to visitors in a manner different than that of tourist agencies. The only similarity we have to the agencies is that through us you can arrange accommodations if you happen to be visiting our city as a backpacker, or if you simply don’t have accommodations. Still, the difference lies in that we will undoubtedly find the least expensive hostel at that moment in downtown Belgrade.

Our purpose is for our guests to familiarize themselves with the way of life in our city. You will have the opportunity to get to know more about our young people, their friends and their friend’s friends, food, drinks, our habits, problems and our entertainment.  The time you spend in Belgrade, you will spend living as a real Belgrader. Parties, get-togethers, debates, exhibits, and if it so happens that one of us is going to a house party while you’re visiting – you’re coming along!!! Of course, before all that you are welcome guests for dinner at grandma Mara’s, who’s cooking has no equal.

We all know how visits to relatives living abroad turn out. By the end, everything boils down to monuments, important buildings, mansions and shopping. “Belgrade Alternative Guide” offers you something completely different and much more exciting. We’ll take you to places that even most Belgraders aren’t familiar with, and most importantly we want to find out what YOU want to see, feel and experience weather those be underground clubs and other places worth going out to or interesting people and high quality cultural and alternative content. If you’re interested, you can spend a day at one of the university faculties to see how Belgrade’s students live.

You’ll be able to visit any of the faculties of the University of Belgrade and of the University of Arts. And as far as academic pursuits are concerned, through us you can get into contact with people from a large number of diverse organizations from the NGO sector, with whom you can share experience and knowledge about your field of study. Through your contact with us, prior to your arrival, you will have the chance to tell us which activities you would personally like to pursue or if you’d like, you could choose from a list of events and activities happening in Belgrade during your stay.

In case you don’t know much about our country and you happen to enjoy surprises, you’ll get a little bit of everything. Of course, you can opt to visit another part of Serbia as well, but you will have to let us know of this wish in advance so that it would be easier for us to make arrangements.

We’re sure that you will have a great time with us, and the profiles of all those involved can be found on this website!!! See you soon!

 Old postcards from Belgrade.

 Old Postcards from Belgrade.

 The Cathedral of Saint Sava (Serbian: Храм светог Саве or Hram svetog Save) is an Orthodox church in Belgrade, the capital ofSerbia, and the largest Orthodox church building in the world^[1]. The church is dedicated to Saint Sava, founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church and an important figure in medieval Serbia. It is built on the Vračar plateau, on the location where his remains are thought to have been burned in 1595 by the Ottoman Empire's Sinan Pasha. From its location, it dominates Belgrade's cityscape, and is perhaps the most monumental building in the city. The building of the church structure is being financed exclusively bydonations. The parish home is nearby, as will be the planned patriarchal building.

It is not a cathedral in the technical ecclesiastical sense, as it is not the seat of a bishop (the seat of the Metropolitan bishop of Belgrade is St. Michael's Cathedral). In Serbian it is called a hram (temple), which is in Eastern Orthodoxy another name for a church In English, it is usually called a cathedral because of its size and importance.

Three hundred years after the burning of Saint Sava's remains, in 1895, the Society for the Construction of the Cathedral of Saint Sava on Vračar was founded in Belgrade. Its goal was to build a cathedral on the place of the burning. A small church was built at the future place of the Cathedral, and it was later moved so the construction of the Cathedral could begin. In 1905, a public contest was launched to design the church; all five applications received were rejected as not being good enough. Soon, the breakout of the First Balkan War in 1912, and subsequent Second Balkan War and First World War stopped all activities on the construction of the church. After the war, in 1919, the Society was re-established. New appeals for designs were made in 1926; this time, it received 22 submissions. Though the first and third prize were not awarded, the second-place project, made by architect Aleksandar Deroko, was chosen for the building of the Cathedral.

Forty years after the initial idea, construction of the church began in May 10, 1935, 340 years after the burning of Saint Sava's remains. Thecornerstone was laid by bishop Gavrilo Dožić-Medenica (the future Serbian Patriarch Gavrilo V). The project was designed by Aleksandar Deroko and Bogdan Nestorović, aided by civil engineer Vojislav Zađina. The work lasted until Second World War Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941. The church's foundation had been completed, and the walls erected to the height of 7 and 11 meters. After the 1941 bombing of Belgrade, work ceased altogether. The occupying German army used the unfinished church as a parking lot, while in 1944 the partisans and the Red Army used it with the same purpose. Later, it was used for storage by various companies. The Society for Building of the Cathedral ceased to exist and has not been revived.

In 1958, Patriarch German renewed the idea of building the church. After 88 requests for continuation of the building—and as many refusals, permission for finishing the building was granted in 1984, and Branko Pešić was chosen as new architect of the church. He remade the original projects to make better use of new materials and building techniques. Construction of the building began again on August 12, 1985. The walls were erected to full height of 40 meters.

The greatest achievement of the construction process was lifting of the 4,000 ton central dome, which was built on the ground, together with the copper plate and the cross, and later lifted onto the walls. The lifting, which took forty days, was finished on June 26, 1989.

As of 2009, the church is mostly complete. The bells and windows had been installed, and the facade completed. However, work on the internal decoration of the building still remains largely unfinished.

AMSTEL BELGRADE FOAM FEST at Belgrade Arena

 The oldest parts of Belgrade Fortress Kalemegdan date back to the first century AD, when it served as permanent Roman military camp. The Belgrade fort itself (split into the Lower and Upper towns) and the surrounding area (the Kalemegdan park) are located on the point where the river Sava flows into the Danube, which today means an amazing panorama but once was the main cause of repeated invasion and war over this strategic point. Because of this, Kalemegdan today bears witness to the many centuries of various conquering cultures and arts.

If you want to have a detailed tour of all there is to see on Kalemegdan, you should set out a whole day; however, if you're tight on time, it's still worth it to take an hour's stroll through the Kalemegdan park and over to the rivers. The easiest way to get there is to walk down Knez Mihajlova street from the beginning (from Terazije Square) to the end at Kalemegdan.

The first settlement was founded in the 3rd century BC - by the Celtic tribes. The old Celtic name was Singidunum. Later the Romans and IV legion of Flavius were settled in Belgrade and slowly the civil settlement started to develop just next to the fort. However, Singidunum was completely wiped out by Huns in year 441. Later the city was rebuilt by tsar Justinian who equipped Kalemegdan with strong walls (at that time, Kalemegan was part of the Byzantine empire). The Slavic name Belgrade was used for the first time in the 9th century.

Belgrade fell to Serbian hands during the rule of king Dragutin in the 13th century, but was mostly developed by Despot Stefan Lazarevic - who was also the founder of the Serbian capital. He created a strong economic, social and educational base in the city. Belgrade soon became the biggest Serbian settlement, and in the upper Kalemegdan fort Despot Stefan Lazarevic built a fort for himself. After his death Belgrade was again conquered by Austro-Hungarians and became one of the rare settlements able to prevent the further breakthrough of Turks to the north.

Belgrade managed to defend itself from Turkish invasion for the first time in 1440 and a second time in 1456, in the famous battle - the so called Antemurale Christianitatis or defense of Christianity in which Janos Hunyadi managed to defeat Sultan Mehmed II. Nevertheless, in 1521 the Turks managed to conquer Kalemegdan and the city of Belgrade and it remained in Turkish hands for 150 years after that.

In 1688, Belgrade fell into Austrian hands again for short time, but their conquest of 1717 allowed them to start developing the city. The styles changed and the look of the city shifted from oriental to Baroque. A new defense structure was implemented, and the current star-shaped form of the fort dates from that age. Kalemegdan fort was virtually unconquerable - unfortunately, according to a 1739 truce with the Ottoman Empire, Austria gave Belgrade up, and not wanting to leave their modern architectural secrets over to the Turks, they systematically destroyed the city on their way out. The last big surge of the castle took place in 1807 during the first Serbian uprising, while in 1867 the Turks finally surrendered and left the city to its Serbian leader Mihailo Obrenovic.

In its long and bloody history, Belgrade was destroyed over 40 times and this is visible in the current look of the castle. In some places you can see several layers of walls of different make, and those originate from vastly different historic periods.

source belgradeeye.com

 Belgrade (Serbian: Београд, Beograd is the capital and largest city of Serbia. The city lies at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. With a population of 1,630,000 (official estimate 2007), Belgrade is the fourth largest city in Southeastern Europe, after Istanbul, Athens and Bucharest. Its name in Serbian translates to White city.

Belgrade's wider city area was the birthplace of the largest prehistoric culture of Europe, the Vinča culture, as early as the 6th millennium BC. In antiquity, the area of Belgrade was inhabited by the Thraco-Dacian tribe of Singi who would give the name to the city after a fortress was founded in the 3rd century BC by the Celts, who named it Singidun (dun, fortress) It was awarded city rights by the Romans before it was permanently settled by Serbs from the 7th century onwards. As a strategic location, the city was battled over in 115 wars and razed to the ground 44 times since the ancient period by countless armies of the East and West. 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 and among the largest European cities. Frequently passing from Ottoman to Austrian rule which saw destruction of most of the city, the status of Serbian capital would be regained only in 1841, after the Serbian revolution. Northern Belgrade, though, remained a Habsburg 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. Its territory is divided into17 municipalities, each having its own local council.^[13] It covers 3.6% of the territory of Serbia, and 24% of the country's population lives in the city. Belgrade is the central economic hub of Serbia, and the capital of Serbian education and science.