1930s Original Photo Belgrade Serbia Terazije Hotel Moskva Balkan Tram 

Original 1930s Miniature Photo

of the

City of BELGRADE

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Miniature photo of the part of Terazije square in 1930s in Belgrade. Old trams can be seen on this picture.

Photo from c. 1930s.

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Size (photo): 9 x 6, 5 cm.

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Several scratches and folding lines.

For other details and condition see the picture.

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From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia:

Belgrade play /ˈbɛlɡreɪd/ (Serbian: Београд or Beograd, [bɛɔ̌ɡrad] ( listen)) is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans.[5] Its name in English translates to White city.

One of the largest prehistoric cultures of Europe, the Vinča culture, evolved from the Belgrade area in the 6th millennium BC. In antiquity, the area was held by Thraco-Dacians, and after 279 BC the Celts conquered the city, naming it Singidūn.[6] It was conquered during the reign of Augustus, and awarded city rights in the mid 2nd century.[7] It was settled by the Slavs in the 520s, and changed hands several times before it become the capital of King Stephen Dragutin (1282–1316). In 1521 Belgrade was conquered by the Ottomans and became the seat of a Sanjak.[8] It frequently passed from Ottoman to Habsburg rule, which saw the destruction of most of the city during the Austro-Turkish wars. Belgrade was again named the capital of Serbia in 1841. Northern Belgrade remained an Habsburg outpost until 1918, when it was merged into the capital city. As a strategic location, the city was battled over in 115 wars and razed to the ground 44 times.[9] Unified Belgrade became the capital of various Yugoslav states from its creation in 1918 to its dismemberment in 2006.

Belgrade has a special administrative status within Serbia.[10] Its metropolitan territory is divided into 17 municipalities, each with its own local council.[11] It covers 3.6% of Serbia's territory, and 22.5% of the country's population lives in the city.[12]

Geography

Belgrade lies 116.75 metres (383.0 ft) above sea level and is located at confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers. The historical core of Belgrade, Kalemegdan, is on the right bank of the rivers. Since the 19th century, the city has been expanding to the south and east, after World War II, New Belgrade was built on the Sava's left bank, merging Belgrade with Zemun. Smaller, chiefly residential communities across the Danube, like Krnjača and Ovča, also merged with the city. The city has an urban area of 360 square kilometres (140 sq mi), while together with its metropolitan area it covers 3,223 km2 (1,244 sq mi). Throughout history, Belgrade has been a crossroads between the West and the Orient.[13]

On the right bank of the Sava, central Belgrade has a hilly terrain, while the highest point of Belgrade proper is Torlak hill at 303 m (994 ft). The mountains of Avala (511 m (1,677 ft)) and Kosmaj (628 m (2,060 ft)) lie south of the city.[14] Across the Sava and Danube, the land is mostly flat, consisting of alluvial plains and loessial plateaus.

Climate

Belgrade's climate exhibits influences of oceanic, humid continental and humid subtropical zones,[15] with four seasons and uniformly spread precipitation. Monthly averages range from 0.4 °C (32.7 °F) in January to 21.8 °C (71.2 °F) in July, with an annual mean of 12.2 °C (54.0 °F). There are, on average, 31 days a year when the temperature is above 30 °C, and 95 days when the temperature is above 25 °C. Belgrade receives about 680 millimetres (27 in) of precipitation a year, with late spring being wettest. The average annual number of sunny hours is 2,025. The highest officially recorded temperature in Belgrade was +43.1 °C (110 °F) on 24 July 2007,[16] while on the other end, the lowest temperature was −26.2 °C (−15 °F) on 10 January 1893.[17]

History

Lady of Vinča (5500 BC)

Main article: Timeline of Belgrade history

See also: History of Serbia

Ancient city

The Neolithic Starčevo- and Vinča cultures prospered in the Belgrade area and dominated the Balkans (as well as parts of Central Europe and Asia Minor) about 7,000 years ago.[6][20][21][22]

The Paleo-Balkan tribes of Thracians and Dacians were the masters of this area prior to the Roman conquest.[23] Belgrade was inhabited by a Thraco-Dacian tribe Singi,[6] while after the Celtic invasion in 279 BC, the Scordisci took the city, naming it "Singidūn" (dun, fortress).[6] In 34-33BC the Roman army led by Silanus reached Belgrade. It became the romanized Singidunum in the 1st century AD, and by the mid-2nd century, the city was proclaimed a municipium by the Roman authorities, evolving into a full fledged colonia (highest city class) by the end of the century.[7] Apart from the first Christian Emperor of Rome who was born on the territory in modern Serbia – Constantine I known as Constantine the Great[24]) – another early Roman Emperor was born in Singidunum: Flavius Iovianus (Jovian), the restorer of Christianity.[25] Jovian reestablished Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, ending the brief revival of traditional Roman religions under his predecessor Julian the Apostate. In 395 AD, the site passed to the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire.[22] Across the Sava from Singidunum was the Celtic city of Taurunum (Zemun); the two were connected with a bridge throughout Roman and Byzantine times.[26]

Middle AgesThe 1456 Siege of Belgrade, as depicted by Turkish miniaturist Mohammed Bey in 1584

Despot Stefan Tower

Kalemegdan

In 442, the area was ravaged by Attila the Hun.[27] In 471, it was taken by Theodoric the Great, who continued into Greece.[28] As the Ostrogoths left for Italy, the Gepids took over the city. In 539 it was retaken by the Byzantines.[29] In 577, some 100,000 Slavs poured into Thrace and Illyricum, pillaging cities and settling down.[30] The Avars and Slavs under Bayan I had by 582 conquered the whole region.[31] According to Byzantine chronicle De Administrando Imperio, the White Serbs had during the rule of Heraclius (610-641) contacted the strategos of Belgrade, asking for lands; they received provinces in the west, towards the Adriatic, which they would rule as foederati.[32] When the Avars were finally destroyed in the 9th century by the Frankish Kingdom, it fell back to Byzantine rule, while Taurunum became part of the Frankish realm (renamed Malevilla).[33] At the same time (around 878), the first record of the name Beligrad appeared, during the rule of the First Bulgarian Empire. For about four centuries, the city remained a battleground between the Byzantine Empire, the Kingdom of Hungary and the First Bulgarian Empire.[34] Basil II (976–1025) installed a garrison in Belgrade.[35] The city hosted the armies of the First and the Second Crusade;[36] while passing through during the Third Crusade, Frederick Barbarossa and his 190,000 crusaders saw Belgrade in ruins.[37]

Stephen Dragutin (r. 1276-1282), received Belgrade from his father-in-law, Stephen V of Hungary in 1284; it served as the capital of the Kingdom of Syrmia, and Dragutin is regarded as the first Serbian king to rule over Belgrade.[38]

Following the Battle of Maritsa in 1371 and the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, the Serbian Empire began to crumble as the Ottoman Empire conquered its southern territory.[39][40] The north resisted through the Serbian Despotate, which had Belgrade as its capital. The city flourished under Stefan Lazarević, son of Serbian prince Lazar Hrebeljanović. Lazarević built a castle with a citadel and towers, of which only the Despot's tower and west wall remain. He also refortified the city's ancient walls, allowing the Despotate to resist the Ottomans for almost 70 years. During this time, Belgrade was a haven for many Balkan peoples fleeing Ottoman rule, and is thought to have had a population of 40, 000 to 50,000 people.[38]

In 1427, Stefan's successor Đurađ Branković had to return Belgrade to the Hungarians, and Smederevo became the new capital. During his reign, the Ottomans captured most of the Serbian Despotate, unsuccessfully besieging Belgrade first in 1440[36] and again in 1456.[41] As it presented an obstacle to their further advance into Central Europe, over 100,000 Ottoman soldiers[42] launched the 1456 Siege of Belgrade, in which the Christian army under Hungarian warlord John Hunyadi successfully defended the city from the Ottomans, wounding Sultan Mehmed II.[43] This battle has been characterized as having "decided the fate of Christendom";[44] the noon bell ordered by Pope Callixtus III commemorates the victory throughout the Christian world to this day.[36][45]

Turkish conquest and Austrian invasions

Belgrade in the 16th century

Seven decades after the initial siege, on August 28, 1521, the fort was finally captured by Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent and his 250,000 soldiers; subsequently, most of the city was razed to the ground and its entire Christian population was deported to Istanbul,[36] to an area that has since become known as the Belgrade forest.[46] Belgrade was made the seat of the district (Sanjak), becoming the second largest Ottoman town in Europe at over 100,000 people, surpassed only by Constantinople.[42] Turkish rule also introduced Ottoman architecture, including numerous mosques, increasing the city's Oriental influences.[47] In 1594, a major Serb rebellion was crushed by the Turks. Later, Grand vizier Sinan Pasha ordered the relics of Saint Sava to be publicly torched on the Vračar plateau; in the 20th century, the Temple of Saint Sava was built to commemorate this event.[48]

Occupied by the Habsburgs three times (1688–1690, 1717–1739, 1789–1791), headed by the Holy Roman Princes Maximilian of Bavaria and Eugene of Savoy,[49] and field marshal Baron Ernst Gideon von Laudon respectively, Belgrade was quickly recaptured and substantially razed each time by the Ottomans.[47] During this period, the city was affected by the two Great Serbian Migrations, in which hundreds of thousands of Serbs, led by their patriarchs, retreated together with the Austrians into the Habsburg Empire, settling in today's Vojvodina and Slavonia.[50]

Austrian conquest of Belgrade: 1717 by Eugene of Savoy, during the Austro-Turkish War of 1716-18

Capital of Serbia

During the First Serbian Uprising, the Serbian revolutionaries held the city from January 8, 1807 until 1813, when it was retaken by the Ottomans.[51] After the Second Serbian Uprising in 1815, Serbia reached semi-independence, which was formally recognized by the Porte in 1830.[52] In 1841, Prince Mihailo Obrenović moved the capital from Kragujevac to Belgrade.[53][54]

Statue of Prince Mihailo III on Republic Square, mid 19th century.

On 10 June 1868, Prince Mihailo was walking through the park of Košutnjak, near his country residence in the outskirts of Belgrade, with his wife Katarina and her mother, Princess Anka, when they were shot by assassins. Mihailo and Anka were both killed, and Katarina was wounded.[55]

With the Principality's full independence in 1878, and its transformation into the Kingdom of Serbia in 1882, Belgrade once again became a key city in the Balkans, and developed rapidly.[51][56] Nevertheless, conditions in Serbia as a whole remained those of an overwhelmingly agrarian country, even with the opening of a railway to Niš, Serbia's second city, and in 1900 the capital had only 70,000 inhabitants[57] (at the time Serbia numbered 1,5 million). Yet by 1905 the population had grown to more than 80,000, and by the outbreak of World War I in 1914, it had surpassed the 100,000 citizens, not counting Zemun which then belonged to Austria-Hungary.[58]

The first-ever projection of motion pictures in the Balkans and Central Europe was held in Belgrade, in June 1896 by Andre Carr, a representative of the Lumière brothers. He shot the first motion pictures of Belgrade in the next year; however, they have not been preserved.[59]

World War I and the Interbellum

Knez Mihailova street at the end of the 19th century

"Kalemegdan is the prettiest and most courageous piece of optimism I know."

Rebecca West in 1936[60][61]

Gavrilo Princip's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 triggered the start of World War I. Most of the subsequent Balkan offensives occurred near Belgrade. Austro-Hungarian monitors shelled Belgrade on July 29, 1914, and it was taken by the Austro-Hungarian Army under General Oskar Potiorek on November 30. On December 15, it was re-taken by Serbian troops under Marshal Radomir Putnik. After a prolonged battle which destroyed much of the city, between October 6 and October 9, 1915, Belgrade fell to German and Austro-Hungarian troops commanded by Field Marshal August von Mackensen on October 9, 1915. The city was liberated by Serbian and French troops on November 5, 1918, under the command of Marshal Louis Franchet d'Espérey of France and Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia. Since Belgrade was decimated as the front-line city, Subotica overtook the title of the largest city in the Kingdom for a while;[62] still, Belgrade grew rapidly, regaining its position by the early 1920s.

After the war, Belgrade became the capital of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. The Kingdom was split into banovinas, and Belgrade, together with Zemun and Pančevo, formed a separate administrative unit.[63]

During this period, the city experienced faster growth and significant modernisation. Belgrade's population grew to 239,000 by 1931 (incorporating the town of Zemun, formerly in Austria-Hungary), and 320,000 by 1940. The population growth rate between 1921 and 1948 averaged 4.08% a year.[64] In 1927, Belgrade's first airport opened, and in 1929, its first radio station began broadcasting. The Pančevo Bridge, which crosses the Danube, was opened in 1935,[65], while "King Alexander Bridge" over Sava was opened in 1934. The last Grand Prix motor racing race before the outbreak of World War II took place around the Belgrade Fortress and was followed by 75,000 spectators.[66] The winner was Tazio Nuvolari.

World War II

Damage caused by the Nazi bombing.

On March 25, 1941, the government of regent Crown Prince Paul signed the Tripartite Pact, joining the Axis powers in an effort to stay out of the Second World War. This was immediately followed by mass protests in Belgrade and a military coup d'état led by Air Force commander General Dušan Simović, who proclaimed King Peter II to be of age to rule the realm. Consequently, the city was heavily bombed by the Luftwaffe on April 6, 1941, when up to 24,000 people were killed.[67][68] Yugoslavia was then invaded by German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian forces, and suburbs as far east as Zemun, in the Belgrade metropolitan area, were incorporated into a Nazi state, the Independent State of Croatia. Belgrade became the seat of the Nedić regime, headed by General Milan Nedić.

During the summer and fall of 1941, in reprisal for guerrilla attacks, Germans carried out several massacres on Belgrade citizens; in particular, members of the Jewish community were subject to mass shootings at the order of General Franz Böhme, the German Military Governor of Serbia. Böhme rigorously enforced the rule that for every German killed, 100 Serbs or Jews would be shot.[69] The resistance movement in Belgrade was led by Major Žarko Todorović from 1941 to his arrest in 1943.[70]

Just like Rotterdam, which was devastated twice, by both German and Allied bombing, Belgrade was bombed once more during World War II, this time by the Allies on April 16, 1944, killing about 1,100 people. This bombing fell on the Orthodox Christian Easter.[71] Most of the city remained under German occupation until October 20, 1944, when it was liberated by the Red Army and the Communist Yugoslav Partisans. On November 29, 1945, Marshal Josip Broz Tito proclaimed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia in Belgrade (later to be renamed to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on April 7, 1963). [72] Higher estimates from the former secret police place the victim count of political persecutions in Belgrade at 10,000.[73]

Communist Yugoslavia

During the post-war period, Belgrade grew rapidly as the capital of the renewed Yugoslavia, developing as a major industrial centre.[56] In 1958, Belgrade's first television station began broadcasting. In 1961, the conference of Non-Aligned Countries was held in Belgrade under Tito's chairmanship. In 1968, major student protests against Tito led to several street clashes between students and the police.

FEST is annual film festival held in Belgrade, Serbia since 1971. The festival is usually held in the first quarter of the year. It was the only film festival in socialist countries that attracted big Hollywood stars such as Jack Nicholson, Kirk Douglas, Robert De Niro and directors like Miloš Forman, Francis Ford Coppola, Gina Lollobrigida etc.

Post-communist history

Ušće Tower on fire caused by NATO bombing, 1999

On March 9, 1991, massive demonstrations led by Vuk Drašković were held in the city against Slobodan Milošević.[74] According to various media outlets, there were between 100,000 and 150,000 people on the streets.[75] Two people were killed, 203 injured and 108 arrested during the protests, and later that day tanks were deployed onto the streets to restore order.[76] Further protests were held in Belgrade from November 1996 to February 1997 against the same government after alleged electoral fraud at local elections.[77] These protests brought Zoran Đinđić to power, the first mayor of Belgrade since World War II who did not belong to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia or its later offshoot, the Socialist Party of Serbia.[78]

NATO bombing (during the Kosovo War in 1999) caused substantial damage to the city. Among the sites bombed were the buildings of several ministries, the RTS building, which killed 16 technicians, several hospitals, the Hotel Jugoslavija, the Central Committee building, the Avala TV Tower, and the Chinese embassy.[79]

After the elections in 2000, Belgrade was the site of major street protests, with over half a million people on the streets. These demonstrations resulted in the ousting of president Milošević.[80][81]

Names through history

            This section may not be warranted as a stand-alone section. Please attempt to diffuse its content into appropriate sections of the article.

Belgrade has had many different names throughout history, and in nearly all languages the name translates as "the white city". Serbian name Beograd is a compound of beo (“white, light”) and grad (“town, city”), and etymologically corresponds to several other city names spread throughout the Slavdom: Belgorod, Białogard, Biograd etc.

Name   Notes

Singidūn(o)-     Named by the Celtic tribe of the Scordisci; dūn(o)- means 'lodgment, enclosure, fort', and for word 'singi' there are 2 theories—one being that it is a Celtic word for circle, hence "round fort", and the other that the name is Paleo-Balkan and originated from the Singi, a Thracian tribe that occupied the area prior to the arrival of the Scordisci.[82] Another theory suggests that the Celtic name actually bears its modern meaning—the White Fort (town).

Singidūnum     Romans conquered the city and Romanized the Celtic name of Singidūn (in turn derived from Paleo-Balkan languages of earlier rulers)

Beograd, Београд        Slavic name first recorded in 878 as Beligrad in a letter of Pope John VIII to Boris of Bulgaria which translates to "White city/fortress".[83]

Alba Graeca     "Alba" is Latin for "White" and "Graeca" is the possessive "Greek"

Alba Bulgarica             Latin name during the period of Bulgarian rule over the city[83]

Griechisch-Weißenburg           German translation for "Greek White city". Modern German is Belgrad.[83]

Castelbianco    Italian translation for "White castle". Modern Italian is Belgrado.[83]

Nandoralba, Nándorfehérvár, Lándorfejérvár             In medieval Hungary. "Fehérvár" means white castle Hungarian - like the Beograd in Serbian. Modern Hungarian is Belgrád.[83]

Veligradh(i)on or Velegradha/Βελέγραδα         Byzantine name. Modern Greek is Veligradhi (Βελιγράδι).

Dar Al Jihad    Arabic name during Ottoman empire meaning "House of War".

Prinz-Eugenstadt          Planned German name of the city after World War II, had it remained a part of the Third Reich. The city was to be named after Prince Eugene of Savoy, the Austrian military commander who conquered the city from the Turks in 1717.[84]

Administration

The Old Palace, seat of City Assembly

Belgrade is a separate territorial unit in Serbia, with its own autonomous city authority.[10] The current mayor is Dragan Đilas of the Democratic Party. The first mayor to be democratically elected after World War II was Zoran Đinđić, in 1996.

The City Assembly of Belgrade has 110 councilors who are elected on four-year terms. The current majority parties are the same as in the Parliament of Serbia (Democratic Party-G17 Plus and Socialist Party of Serbia-Party of United Pensioners of Serbia with the support of Liberal Democratic Party), and in similar proportions, with the Serbian Radical Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia-New Serbia in opposition.[85]

As the capital city, Belgrade also hosts the National Assembly of Serbia, the Government of Serbia and its agencies, and 64 foreign embassies.

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