This post is our second visit to Serbia. In this post we drove from Timisoara in Romania to Belgrade, the Capital and largest city of Serbia. We take an extensive tour of the city and travel along the Danube to Eastern Serbia along the Iron Gate Gorge.
This post also sees Leo leave to return to Australia for work.
The drive from Timisoara to Belgrade was quite flat, full of wheat fields. The day was very cloudy so our pictures were limited. We arrived early into Belgrade so we could attend a 2.5hr sunset cruise on the Danube and Sava Rivers through Belgrade City. Sadly the day was overcast and even cold but the cruise was excellent – a small barge like boat carrying us and only one other couple with unlimited beer, wine, softies and snacks included. There is a huge uninhabited, protected island called The Great War Island in the centre where the Danube and Sava rivers converge and this island is full of bird life and wild boar. The city itself has an extensive waterfront with multiple bridges. Amongst them is the tallest single concrete pylon suspension bridge. Arabs from the Middle East have invested heavily in this area. We also passed the Kalemegdan Fortress and the Novak Djokovic Tennis Academy, both on the shores of the Danube. The cruise was a great introduction to Belgrade.
Belgrade (Pop 1.374m, Elev 117m, Founded 3rd
Century BC) is busy and big. Traffic is crazy. Every hour is peak hour!
Belgrade has been the object of conflict for centuries since it lies at the
confluence (or joining) of two major rivers – The Danube and Sava. Belgrade is
also three cities in one. Old Belgrade (Centre), New Belgrade and Zemun. The
centre was founded early with narrow roads and now everyone has cars causing
traffic and parking chaos. For this reason Novi (New) Belgrade was built with
wide boulevards, parks and plenty of space. Zemun on the other hand was founded
by the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and has preserved their way of life and
architecture so that this place bears no resemblance to the rest of Belgrade. Zemun
is quaint with cobbled stone streets and cute houses. We took a tour of the
city in a mini-van with 3 others but sadly there was cloud and light rain for
most of the day and for the first time on our trip the temperature was under
20C at a cool 15C. We visited the Kalemegdan Fortress, Novi (New) Belgrade,
Zemun, Avala Mountain Monument to the Unknown Soldier culminating in the
Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St Sava built in 2020. It is now the second
largest Orthodox Church in the world in area and has amazing icon mosaics and
also an underground crypt with painted iconography to die for on every inch of
available wall and ceiling. The church was our favourite inside since the
outside is plain white. Belgrade has had 15 name changes since it was founded
in the 3rd Century BC which another testament to how many political
ethnicities have occupied it – it seems that everyone wants to be here – a city
on the crossroads.
The next day we farewelled Leo in the morning and Paris and I took a second tour with 3 others. We travelled east of Belgrade to reach the Danube and our first stop was the iconic Golubac Fortress. No one knows when or who built it but the earliest written evidence of the fortress is 1335. This fortress has nine towers in all, each between 20 and 25m high. The fortress was occupied by many groups other than the Serbian Kings including the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and the Ottomans and saw a lot of action during the middle ages right up until the early 20th Century. It remained unkept for a long time and was only recently renovated including shifting the main road that used to go through it to a tunnel next to it. There was also a grand palace in the fortress but this was destroyed in one of the battles and now is the tourist centre.
From the fortress we entered the Iron Gate Gorge which snakes some 130km along the Danube with Romania on one side and Serbia on the other until it hits Bulgaria – a three-country border! Our second stop was the amazing Lepenski Vir. This is a pre-historic Mesolithic archaeological site discovered accidently in 1965 during excavations to build the Iron Gate Dam. An entire village was discovered complete with home foundations, human and animal skeletons and over 100 items (eating utensils, tools and instruments, jewellery, altars, sculptures, ceramics, cutting stones, pots and art) dating back to 7000-6000BC !!! It is covered by a huge steel & glass canopy to protect it from the weather. The people who lived here were the first to cultivate crops and farm animals and therefore it is claimed that this is proof of the earliest civilisations in Europe. The site is located in front of Treskavica Mountain, an awesome sheer cliff face surrounded by pines – it is suspected that this place was chosen to worship the god-like mountain. The site was then lifted and shifted higher up the bank to prevent it from flooding when the dam was completed. An amazing place and well worth visiting.
Our final stop was for lunch at a popular family owned restaurant and tourist complex known as Kapetan Misin Breg.
The journey back to Belgrade was 2.5hrs and blessed by sunshine and a shimmering Danube.
Enjoy the sights of Belgrade and The Danube of Iron Gorge…
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