Just imagine… A pleasant, chilly, early morning on the outskirts of Belgrade. Sun rays are peeping out behind the low residential buildings across the road, and breaking through the clouds dust that rises from the ground, just to rest on the face of the young lieutenant of the Royal Guard. He takes out his fire steel and the flint, lits his rolled cigarette and prepares for the muster. The neighing and snorting, the clip-clopping of horses and the banter of youngsters wearing their perfectly ironed uniforms echo between the low barracks and stables. The horse-car tumult and the giggling of the young dames…
Category: Belgrade Parks
Stories of Belgrade Parks and why it may be worth visiting them.
Local patriotism is inherent to most Belgraders. However, if people from all parts of Belgrade were to gather in one place to measure it, we are pretty sure that the pride of the inhabitants of Zemun would strikingly overwhelm all others. Without a grain of doubt. Because they live in “their own town”- where the spirit of of Celtic Taurunum, Bulgarian Zemlin, Austrian Semlin and (let’s be frank) Croatian Kingdom under Austro-Hungarian rule coalesce in one. Zemuners say that there are many parts of Belgrade, but there is only one proper town within Belgrade.And they are right quite right when…
Introduction If we’d have to describe Karađorđe’s Park through a series of phrases we would choose the park of wartime memorials, dogs, white coats and football hooligans. Karađorđe’s Park is considered the founder of public green spaces in Belgrade. The first deliberately planted chestnuts and acacias date all the way back to 1806. Today, the park covers a modest area of 3 acres on the Vračar slope, edged by two thoroughfares – Neboysha’s street and Liberation Boulevard. The main path goes full length of the park. The foliage that encircles it is almost like a fairytale alleyway. And just a…
Hyde Park in Belgrade is one of the most enigmatic pieces of greenery on the Internet. Mostly because you can’t find any historical data about it. It‘s close to the Museum of the History of Yugoslavia and the eternal home of ex-Yugoslavia’s lifetime president, Marshall Tito. It seemed adequate that the greatest pharaoh of our nations should have a grove to cool down his resting place. Or that he should be abstracted from the final resting places of other Serbian rulers, who happened to end their lives nearby. In a way, Belgrade Parks can be divided along the gluttony-drug abuse-fitness…
It is as central as it can get. Couple hundred feet away from the pyramid that designates the spot where the geographical coordinates of our (anything-but) White City meet. One of the favourite pub stories is that the pyramid is a Masonic symbol, but even if it were true, where else would a prospective mason put a symbol of Masonry? That’s right, the city center. Now, as much as conspiracy theories have been one of the favorite national past-times since the 1990s, we won’t be delving into them now. And we kinda overused the word center in this first paragraph anyway. So,…
If you’re among those who don’t know what Pioneers Park in Belgrade is, you might be led to think that it is somehow related to Pioneers Town in Košutnjak, the Home of Pioneers or the Youth center. To those of us who grew behind the Iron Curtain, it only seemed natural that Pioneers should have their parks and settlements, and then when they grow up a bit, they move to youth and student homes, towers and cities. Well, at least it did to this author’s underage logic. None of those places are related, apart from the fact that they were named…
Introduction Tasmajdan Park (colloquially called Tash) is the second largest park located in the very heart of Belgrade. It’s so central, that you’d have to be as disoriented as a blind lesbian in a fish market to miss it. In the past fifty years, it has become one of the all-time favourite playgrounds of the capital and a popular gathering, leisure and recreation spot. As was the case with other parts of Serbia, the long, interesting and, at times, peculiar history hasn’t bypassed Tasmajdan either. The name of the park and its neighbourhood is of Turkish origin. The “word taş“…
Many stories have been told about Old Belgrade, but very few have been preserved in their entirety, either by their contemporaries or serious chroniclers. Particularly comprehensive ones are a proper rarity, very few were put on paper and almost none had been studied thoroughly. Proverbially negligent and destitute Serbia usually realizes the true value of its heritage once that heritage is gone. Because of all that, stories about Čubura may only be found in fragments, in the scarce memories of the elder citizens or the written endeavors of the very few enthusiasts who had bothered to scratch below the surface…
To say that Belgrade Parks (65 of them) are particularly impressive means either deliberate economizing with the truth or complete oblivion of the order of things in the universe. Given that none of them has made it for more than a 100 years unchanged, we cannot really boast a tradition of cultivating green areas. In a city that has been razed to the ground so many times (and where budget was spent sensibly more often as an exception than as a rule), landscape architecture had suffered its own share. Therefore, there is not a single park that seems like a whole…