Smart Self-Managed Tours

City guide · Serbia

Belgrade

A photograph of Belgrade
Photograph · Radosław Botev · CC BY 3.0 pl

Belgrade is 389.12 km² holding 1,197,714 people, and it stands on the point where the Sava runs into the Danube. That confluence is why the city exists and why it has been fought over so relentlessly: it has been battled over in 115 wars and razed 44 times. The name Beograd means white city. The administrative area holds 1,682,720 people across 3,234.96 km² in 17 municipalities. The part a visitor uses is a fraction of that — the old town on the ridge above the rivers, and the streets running down from it.

Practical information
Language spoken
Serbian
Written in both Cyrillic and Latin; English is understood in tourist districts
Dialling code
+381 11
Belgrade landlines; drop the leading 0 of 011 when calling from abroad
Currency
Serbian dinar (RSD)
Euros are not accepted; cards are widely taken in Belgrade
Emergency number
112
One number across the country; 194 reaches an ambulance directly
Plug type
Type C and F · 230 V
Standard European two-pin
Tap water
Not recorded
No verified national source in the dataset

Planning a visit

Suggested stay
2–3 days
Getting around
Tram, bus and on foot
  1. January: seasonal closure recorded
  2. February: seasonal closure recorded
  3. March: seasonal closure recorded
  4. April: no seasonality data recorded
  5. May: recorded as a best month to visit
  6. June: recorded as a best month to visit
  7. July: no seasonality data recorded
  8. August: no seasonality data recorded — this month
  9. September: recorded as a best month to visit
  10. October: seasonal closure recorded
  11. November: seasonal closure recorded
  12. December: seasonal closure recorded

Top things to see

Ranked by importance — sitelinks, pageviews and heritage status, not editor preference.

Filter the list

50 places match

Category

Historic monuments 510 Museums 67 Places of worship 140 Nature sites 158 Viewpoints 31 Food and drink 27 Markets and shopping 129 Entertainment 29 Nightlife 377 Family attractions 4 Art and culture 259 Activities 1

Typical visit duration

Up to 1 hour 1259 1 to 2 hours 468 Half a day or more 5

Interests

History 717 Art 399 Museums 326 Nature 189 Sea and beach 158 Viewpoints 31
  1. Nikola Tesla Museum
    01 1 hour

    Nikola Tesla Museum

    The Nikola Tesla Museum holds Tesla's papers and Tesla's ashes, in a villa on a residential street.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Vračar
  2. Belgrade Fortress
    02 3 hours

    Belgrade Fortress

    The Belgrade Fortress is 66 hectares of wall on the point where the Sava meets the Danube, and almost every empire that has held the Balkans has rebuilt it.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Stari Grad
  3. Boat to the meeting of the Sava and the Danube
    03 1 hr 30 min

    Boat to the meeting of the Sava and the Danube

    Belgrade exists because of a corner of water. The Sava comes in from the west, the Danube runs down from the north, and the ridge where they meet has been fortified by everyone who has held it since the Celts.

    • Must see
    • Activity
    • Savski Venac
  4. House of Flowers
    04 1 hr 30 min

    House of Flowers

    The House of Flowers is Tito's grave, and it was built as a greenhouse.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Savski Venac
  5. Church of Saint Sava
    05 1 hour

    Church of Saint Sava

    The Church of Saint Sava stands where an Ottoman general burned a saint's bones, and it took eighty-five years to build.

    • Must see
    • Place of worship
    • Vračar
  6. National Library of Serbia
    06 15 min

    National Library of Serbia

    The National Library of Serbia is the country's central legal-deposit library, housed since 1973 in a purpose-built structure on the Vračar plateau, next to the Temple of Saint Sava.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Stari Grad
  7. Singidunum
    07 30 min

    Singidunum

    Singidunum is the Roman name for the fortified settlement that stood on the ridge now occupied by Belgrade Fortress, at the point where the Sava River meets the Danube.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Stari Grad
  8. Semlin concentration camp
    08 45 min

    Semlin concentration camp

    Staro Sajmište was a trade fair before it was a camp, and people live on the site now.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • New Belgrade
  9. Museum of Yugoslav History
    09 2 hours

    Museum of Yugoslav History

    The Museum of Yugoslav History sits in Dedinje and exists because Josip Broz Tito is buried in its garden.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Savski Venac
  10. National Museum of Serbia
    10 2 hr 30 min

    National Museum of Serbia

    The National Museum is the oldest and largest museum in Serbia, and it was shut for fifteen years.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Stari Grad
  11. Kalemegdan Park
    11 1 hour

    Kalemegdan Park

    Kalemegdan Park is the 53-hectare public park that wraps around Belgrade Fortress on a 125-metre-high cliff at the junction of the Sava and Danube rivers.

    • Must see
    • Nature site
    • Stari Grad
  12. Pobednik
    12 15 min

    Pobednik

    Pobednik, meaning The Victor, is a bronze statue by the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović standing on the ramparts of Belgrade Fortress at the point where the Sava and Danube rivers meet.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Stari Grad
  13. Museum of Contemporary Art
    13 2 hours

    Museum of Contemporary Art

    The Museum of Contemporary Art is Belgrade's dedicated institution for 20th- and 21st-century Yugoslav and Serbian art, standing on the tip of Ušće park in New Belgrade, at the point where the Sava river meets the Danube.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • New Belgrade
  14. Great War Island
    14 3 hours

    Great War Island

    Great War Island is an uninhabited river island at the point where the Sava flows into the Danube, inside Belgrade's Zemun municipality.

    • Must see
    • Nature site
    • Zemun
  15. Gardoš Tower
    15 30 min

    Gardoš Tower

    The Gardoš Tower was built by Hungary to mark a thousand years in the Pannonian plain, and it stands on the edge of what was then the empire.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Zemun
  16. Beli dvor
    16 1 hr 30 min

    Beli dvor

    Beli dvor, the White Palace, was built between 1934 and 1937 in Dedinje as the private residence of Prince Regent Paul of Yugoslavia, who ruled as regent for the young King Peter II from 1934 to 1941.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Savski Venac
  17. Belgrade Main railway station
    17 5 min

    Belgrade Main railway station

    Belgrade Main railway station is a disused 19th-century station building on Savski trg, built between 1882 and 1885 to a design begun by the Austrian architect Wilhelm von Flattich and completed by Dragiša Milutinović.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Savski Venac
  18. Ethnographic Museum
    18 1 hr 30 min

    Ethnographic Museum

    The Ethnographic Museum documents the folk life of Serbia and the wider South Slavic region: costume, craft and custom rather than fine art.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Stari Grad
  19. Princess Ljubica's Residence
    19 1 hour

    Princess Ljubica's Residence

    Princess Ljubica's Residence is an 1830 town house in Belgrade's Stari Grad district, built for Prince Miloš Obrenović as a home for his wife, Princess Ljubica, and their sons Milan and Mihailo.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Stari Grad
  20. Belgrade Synagogue
    20 20 min

    Belgrade Synagogue

    The Belgrade Synagogue, known as Sukkat Shalom, is the only functioning synagogue in Serbia today and the religious centre of Belgrade's Ashkenazi Jewish community.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Stari Grad
  21. Museum of African Art
    21 1 hour

    Museum of African Art

    A single-donor museum in a quiet villa street, the Museum of African Art holds nothing acquired by an institution — the entire founding collection came from Zdravko Pečar and Veda Zagorac, a Yugoslav diplomat and his wife who spent years…

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Savski Venac
  22. Belgrade Military Museum
    22 1 hr 30 min

    Belgrade Military Museum

    The Military Museum traces back to 1878, when the Serbian army founded a collection of captured Ottoman weapons in Kragujevac; it moved to Belgrade and, since 1924, has occupied a purpose-built structure on the upper terrace of Kalemegdan, designed by…

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Stari Grad
  23. National Theatre in Belgrade
    23 45 min

    National Theatre in Belgrade

    The National Theatre opened on Republic Square in 1868, modelled by the architect Aleksandar Bugarski on Milan's La Scala and Moscow's Bolshoi rather than on a local precedent, at a time when Serbia was asserting itself as a modern European…

    • Must see
    • Art and culture venue
    • Stari Grad
  24. Topčider
    24 1 hour

    Topčider

    Topčider is a forest park in Belgrade built around the country residence of Prince Miloš Obrenović, the ruler who founded modern Serbia.

    • Must see
    • Nature site
    • Savski Venac
  25. Royal Palace
    25 1 hr 30 min

    Royal Palace

    The Royal Palace was built between 1912 and 1929 in Dedinje for King Alexander I Karađorđević, its construction interrupted by the Balkan Wars and the First World War and finished only after Alexander proclaimed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Savski Venac
  26. Tašmajdan Park
    26 45 min

    Tašmajdan Park

    Tašmajdan is a former stone quarry turned public park in central Belgrade — the name itself comes from the Turkish taš, stone, and Serbian majdan, quarry, and describes exactly what the ground was before it became green space.

    • Must see
    • Nature site
    • Palilula
  27. Prince Mihailo Monument
    27 15 min

    Prince Mihailo Monument

    The Monument to Prince Mihailo is a bronze equestrian statue standing at the centre of Republic Square, Belgrade's main square.

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Stari Grad
  28. Jevremovac botanic garden
    28 1 hour

    Jevremovac botanic garden

    Jevremovac is a university botanic garden in the Stari Grad municipality of Belgrade, run by the University of Belgrade's School of Biology.

    • Must see
    • Nature site
    • Stari Grad
  29. Museum of Vuk and Dositej
    29 45 min

    Museum of Vuk and Dositej

    The Museum of Vuk and Dositej is a single-house museum in the Stari Grad district of Belgrade dedicated to two figures of the Serbian Enlightenment: Dositej Obradović (1742–1811), writer and Serbia's first Minister of Education, and Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787–1864)…

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Stari Grad
  30. Residence of Prince Miloš
    30 45 min

    Residence of Prince Miloš

    The Residence of Prince Miloš was built between 1830 and 1834 for Miloš Obrenović, the prince who led Serbia's second uprising against Ottoman rule and secured its autonomy, and it is one of the few surviving buildings from that transitional…

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Savski Venac
  31. Bajrakli Mosque
    31 20 min

    Bajrakli Mosque

    The Bajrakli Mosque is the only mosque left in Belgrade, out of 273 that stood here under Ottoman rule.

    • Must see
    • Place of worship
    • Stari Grad
  32. St. Mark's Church
    32 30 min

    St. Mark's Church

    St. Mark's Church is a Serbian Orthodox church on Tašmajdan hill in central Belgrade, built between 1931 and 1940 to designs by the brothers Petar and Branko Krstić, both professors at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Architecture.

    • Must see
    • Place of worship
    • Palilula
  33. Belgrade Zoo
    33 2 hr 30 min

    Belgrade Zoo

    Belgrade Zoo opened in 1936 inside Kalemegdan Park, built directly into the fortress grounds rather than on open land elsewhere in the city, which makes it one of relatively few zoos anywhere sited inside a historic fortification.

    • Must see
    • Family attraction
    • Stari Grad
  34. St. Michael's Cathedral
    34 20 min

    St. Michael's Cathedral

    St. Michael's Cathedral is the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Metropolitanate of Belgrade, built between 1837 and 1845 on the site of an earlier church destroyed in the Ottoman era.

    • Must see
    • Place of worship
    • Stari Grad
  35. Atelje 212
    35 2 hours

    Atelje 212

    Atelje 212 is a repertory theatre in central Belgrade, opened on 12 November 1956 with a staging of Goethe's Faust directed by Mira Trailović.

    • Must see
    • Art and culture venue
    • Stari Grad
  36. Ružica Church
    36 15 min

    Ružica Church

    Ružica Church is a small Serbian Orthodox church inside Belgrade Fortress, on the path down from the Upper Town to the Lower Town.

    • Must see
    • Place of worship
    • Stari Grad
  37. Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Belgrade
    37 5 min

    Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Belgrade

    This building on Svetozara Markovića street is the Episcopal Palace, seat of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Belgrade — the Roman Catholic archdiocese covering Central Serbia, with the Diocese of Subotica and the Diocese of Zrenjanin as its suffragans.

    • Must see
    • Place of worship
    • Vračar
  38. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
    38 20 min

    Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

    The Church of St. Alexander Nevsky is a Serbian Orthodox parish church in Belgrade's Dorćol neighborhood, standing on Cara Dušana Street in the Stari Grad municipality.

    • Must see
    • Place of worship
    • Stari Grad
  39. Railway Museum
    39 1 hour

    Railway Museum

    The Railway Museum in Savski Venac is the national collection of Serbian and former Yugoslav railway history, founded on 1 February 1950. Its first exhibition, in 1953, was titled "Through the History of Yugoslav Railways".

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Savski Venac
  40. Museum of Applied Arts
    40 1 hr 30 min

    Museum of Applied Arts

    The Museum of Applied Art on Vuka Karadžića street holds over 37,000 objects spanning 2,400 years of applied art, founded on 6 November 1950. Its oldest pieces are Ancient Greek coins from the fourth century BC.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Stari Grad
  41. Kafana ?
    41 1 hr 30 min

    Kafana ?

    Kafana “?” is Belgrade's oldest still-operating tavern, and it wears its name as a scar from a fight with the church across the street.

    • Must see
    • Restaurant or café
    • Stari Grad
  42. Co-cathedral of Christ the King in Belgrade
    42 30 min

    Co-cathedral of Christ the King in Belgrade

    The Co-cathedral of Christ the King on Krunska street is the oldest Catholic place of worship in Belgrade, a city where the Catholic minority has always shared ground with an Orthodox majority.

    • Must see
    • Place of worship
    • Vračar
  43. Hammam of Prince Miloš
    43 15 min

    Hammam of Prince Miloš

    The Hammam of Prince Miloš is a Turkish-style bathhouse built in 1836-37, and it is currently a bath nobody can bathe in: OpenStreetMap's own record of the site, last checked 27 April 2026, lists its opening hours as switched off.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Savski Venac
  45. Ičko’s House
    45 20 min

    Ičko’s House

    Ičko's House at 18 Bežanijska street in Zemun is one of the oldest surviving town houses in the Belgrade area, built in 1793 in a plain Classical style — and it takes its name from a diplomat who hid there…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Zemun
  46. Monument of Gratitude to France
    46 10 min

    Monument of Gratitude to France

    Twenty thousand people filled Kalemegdan Park on 11 November 1930 to watch King Alexander I, Queen Maria, Prince Paul and Princess Olga unveil a bronze woman striding forward with one arm raised — Belgrade's Monument of Gratitude to France, dedicated…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Stari Grad
  47. Tomb of national heroes on Kalemegdan
    47 10 min

    Tomb of national heroes on Kalemegdan

    The Tomb of the People's Heroes sits under the walls of Belgrade Fortress, and it was not filled all at once: four communist figures were buried there one at a time over nine years, from 1948 to 1957, as each…

    • Must see
    • Historic monument
    • Stari Grad
  48. Belgrade City Museum
    48 2 hours

    Belgrade City Museum

    The Belgrade City Museum (Muzej grada Beograda) was founded in 1903, when the city assembly voted to build a collection documenting Belgrade itself rather than the wider Serbian state.

    • Must see
    • Museum
    • Savski Venac
  49. Dedinje Royal Compound
    49 2 hr 30 min

    Dedinje Royal Compound

    The Royal Compound (Kraljevski kompleks) is the enclosed park in Dedinje, on the wooded ridge south-west of central Belgrade, that King Alexander I Karadordevic chose in the 1920s as the site for a new royal residence away from the old…

    • Must see
    • Nature site
    • Savski Venac

Source: OpenStreetMap contributors, Wikidata ·

Where to base yourself

District boundaries come from OSM administrative relations, so a district page holds exactly the places inside it — plus, for the islands and the coast, the nearest district by proximity.

  • Stari Grad

    Places
    571
    Across the district
    35 min

  • Savski Venac

    Places
    222
    Across the district
    1 hr 24 min

  • New Belgrade

    Places
    184
    Across the district
    2 hours

  • Vračar

    Places
    135
    Across the district
    40 min

  • Zemun

    Places
    127
    Across the district
    4 hr 56 min

  • Palilula

    Places
    131
    Across the district
    7 hr 42 min

  • Zvezdara

    Places
    116
    Across the district
    1 hr 48 min

  • Čukarica

    Places
    95
    Across the district
    3 hr 6 min

  • Voždovac

    Places
    87
    Across the district
    4 hr 29 min

  • Rakovica

    Places
    60
    Across the district
    1 hr 55 min

How the city is laid out

Two Belgrades, split by the Sava.

Old Belgrade sits on the ridge on the right bank, above the confluence. The fortress is at the point; Stari Grad, the old town, runs back from it; Vračar rises behind that with the Church of Saint Sava on top; Dorćol drops north towards the Danube and Savamala south towards the Sava.

New Belgrade is on the left bank of the Sava, built from 1948 onward on empty ground to demonstrate that Yugoslavia was at the forefront of progress. It is towers and boulevards on a grid and it is a different city.

Zemun, further up the Danube on the left bank, was a separate town under Austria-Hungary until the twentieth century and still reads as one — low houses, a hill with a tower, and the border of an empire running through it.

Checked 2026-08-23

Getting around

Trams, buses, trolleybuses and walking. There is no metro.

A metro has been discussed for decades and is not in operation; anyone reading about the Belgrade metro is reading about a construction programme, not a way to get across the city today.

The old town is compact and the walk from the fortress to the Church of Saint Sava takes about half an hour, all of it through the parts a visitor came for. New Belgrade and Zemun need transport.

Taxis are cheap by western European standards and are the usual way across the river at night.

Checked 2026-08-23

Common questions

How many days does Belgrade need?

Two to three. Two cover the fortress, Kalemegdan, the old town and the Church of Saint Sava. A third adds Zemun on the Danube and a look at New Belgrade.

Is there a metro?

No. Belgrade runs trams, buses and trolleybuses, and a metro has been discussed for decades without entering service. The old town is walkable and taxis are cheap.

What does Beograd mean?

White city. The name is literal.

Why is the city so scarred?

It stands where the Sava meets the Danube, which made it the frontier between empires. It has been fought over in 115 wars and razed 44 times.

What is the difference between Old and New Belgrade?

The Sava. Old Belgrade is the ridge above the confluence with the fortress at its point. New Belgrade is on the left bank, built from 1948 on empty ground as a demonstration of Yugoslav modernity.

Which districts should I stay in?

Stari Grad for the old town, Vračar behind it for a quieter residential base, Dorćol towards the Danube and Savamala on the Sava for the nightlife. Zemun is a separate town in feel and is further out.

Turn this list into a plan

Set your days, your pace and the hours you actually want to be out. The planner works around closing days and travel time, and leaves room to eat.

Plan Belgrade