18 - Daytrip to Kalemegdan

Today we faced the unknown and ventured out to see what all this fuss about Kalemegdan is all about. To fill you in on a bit of history here is an extract from the Serbian Tourism website.

"Although Belgrade, is a very old city, known as Singidunum in the Roman times, it hasn't got many monuments from the past. It has been the target of many invaders throughout its history, so that was destroyed and rebuilt many times. There are almost no structures dating back to the old Roman times or medieval monuments. There are some monuments dating back to the times under Turkish rule. The best preserved of the latter is Kalemegdan, the old core of the Belgrade fortress. Apart from some Roman foundations and walls dating back to Despot Stefan's period (early 15th century), almost all its other fortifications were built in the 18th century by the Austrians. The complex system of extensive heavy ramparts, towers, bridges, turrets, moats and passages encompasses a number of fine fortress gateways, a clock tower, an old Roman well, and the Ruzica Church in the upper part; and a baroque gateway and the medieval Nebojsa Tower in the lower part. The fortress has been turned into a city park offering a wide variety of monuments from more recent times. Particularly attractive is a sculpture by Ivan Mestrovic - Pobednik (The Victor). The Military Museum in Kalemegdan, has a large collection of weapons and documents illustrating the history of Belgrade and Yugoslavia from the earliest times to date."

We found Kalemegdan to be a wonderful peaceful place. It was quite something to see the Danube, which is such a famous river (though more because of Strauss and Vienna than because of Belgrade). The Danube seems to have played an important part in a lot of the history around Belgrade. It was the border of the Roman empire with the Barbarians. It was also a good defense against invasion.

Walking about we did however, miss knowing the history that happened around this place and one would have loved a guided tour or audio guide. Something that seems to be lacking in Belgrade. They are not very focused on tourism. This is understandable though, looking at their turbulent history and recent wars. They are currently renovating a lot of the fortress structures and I would love to come back in 10 years and see how Kalemegdan has developed in this area.

The absence of English descriptions of what you are looking at is also a bit frustrating. Although we have stared to figure out the Cyrillic alphabet, we still don't know the language that well and understood very little. Even in the military museum which had such awesome exhibitions, a lot of it was lost on us because we could not understand the information given.

At the end of the day we had a lovely experience and our interest into the history of Kalemegdan and Belgrade was higtened.