(a Belgrade apartment for a) Day near Arena

 Click to see the full offer of our Belgrade apartments near the Arena.

Owing to tremendous amounts of empty space and its rather convenient structure for civil engineering, New Belgrade is one of the rare places in Serbia that keeps surprising us with dandy feats of architecture on an almost yearly basis. Some of these recent endeavours have resulted in the creation of new city landmarks – the moviephiles from all sides hurl to Fontana as much as they visit Kinoteka, the shopaholics have long abandoned High Street for the air conditioned halls of Delta City and Confluence Shopping Malls, and most of the sports fans prefer to come to Belgrade Arena, to the good old Pioneer Hall. And once you get to compare them the changing habits become pretty much self explanatory.

The readers of this blog [sic!] have had a chance to acquaint themselves with some of the accommodation units in our offer that happen to be near Belgrade Arena. Today, however, we have decided to pay homage not only to the apartment that took its name, but also to the currently largest indoor Arena in Europe, Belgrade’s own, KOMBANK Arena. (Skip to Infographic if you don’t feel like reading).

(Apartment for) A day in….? series was originally conceptualized to actually give an unbiased hint to potential guests of Belgrade of what’s worth visiting in a particular area (and for all the record, we-re not reinventing the wheel because TripAdvisor has fallen prey to false reviews). With Arena, however, this approach is kind of tricky. For one, if you’re looking to stay near Belgrade Arena, it’s fairly likely that the highlight of your visit is cemented by one of the numerous events that take place there, thus rendering accommodation and everything around the event at the bottom of the priority list. Then there is the question of surroundings – as gigantic as the Arena itself the mere listing of facilities would bore any prospective reader to death (and we kinda leave it for some other apartments as there is still a few left). For all these reasons, today’s scribbling will be a pinch less pragmatic in that respect and load you with a number of historical facts which you might find as useful as a chocolate teapot.

THE HISTORY OF BELGRADE ARENA (Third time the Charm?)

[cycloneslider id=”belgrade-arena-beginnings”]

In 1989, the honour of organising the World Basketball Championship in 1994 was bestowed upon Belgrade. With a single precondition – to build a new Sports hall. The city authorities of the time had an open contest, won by Mr Vlada Slavica’s architectural solution. New Belgrade’s block 25 was chosen as a construction site due to its fine infrastructure and the project board consisted of 126 different enterprises. In 1992, owing to their experience in the sports hall constructyion, an american civil engineering company called HOK was also contracted. The construction began in 1991, and the name which the public started using for it, LIMES sports hall, was actually the name of the company that was representing the investors.
Meanwhile, unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing glove. The biggest shitfest in Europe since the end of WWII (also known as the breakup of Yugoslavia) ensued, and apart from having the UN sanctions imposed, the honour of hosting the championship has been stripped off Belgrade and moved to Toronto. Surprisingly, the work continued and even at the time of hyperinflation, but as the embargo took its effect the means were eventually depleted and the construction ground to a halt in 1995. Three years later however, the the world table tennis federation, in spite of the political climate, decided to give hosting of the 1999 world cup to Belgrade. Unfortunately, a minor problem, that enticed an unauthorised breach and unloading of deadly cargo over the country’s airspace on behalf of the strongest military alliance in the world, delayed the completion for another couple of years.
Belgrade has finally made it, the third time around. Arena has become the largest indoor arena in Europe and the first sport event it hosted was FIBA’s Diamond Ball in 2004. A bit more on that in the Infographic below…

BELGRADE ARENA (IN NUMBERS)

The architect, Vlada Slavica has been with the arena since day one (in 1989). He claims that every single inch of the arena is the result of a careful movement analysis. Since Mr Slavica has personally controlled it, the humanity now knows that even when the crowd is at its peak (during half-times) there are at least 5 or 6 unoccupied urinals in the restrooms. Moreover, according to his stopwatch, from the moment of the final whistle till the moment when the last had visitor left the hall, only five minutes had elapsed (contrasting the estimated calculation of 9.6). There are truly very few experts who work with such zeal nowadays.

Belgrade APARTMENT FOR A DAY NEAR ARENA? But, of course – Arena

Since we’ve paid our respect to the Belgrade Arena, it-s time to say a few words about the apartment ARENA. The apartment is a perfectly comfy and rather snuggled studio with a comparatively large bathroom and just seven minutes away on foot from its namesake and half of that to Greko-Cypriot shopping center. It was fully refurbished in the outset of 2015 and the freshness still pertains. Tete-a-tete, it’s the pet of representatives of RENTASTAN as it’s cute, snuggled, unpretentious and most importantly quite affordable. These epithets are in a way, what we are trying to embody in terms of service. and represent qualities that anyone can relate to. To what extent we actually succeed in doing so is left to the return visits ratio to decide. In the meantime we invite you to take a look at the pics below and tell us whether you share our opinion.

[cycloneslider id=”1914″]

If you would like to check the availability of this Belgrade apartment for a day near arena, please visit the apartments homepage straight away.