Category: Hidden Belgrade

Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade: Opening Belgrade’s Chakras

Researching the occult practices in Socialist Yugoslavia, I came across a fantastic PhD dissertation (and book) by Nikola Pešić on the “Occult in the art of Marina Abramović” (I was happy to find out that his mentor was the great Professor Nemanja Radulović who I interviewed for my Pokretači podcast). Apart from Pešić’s analysis of Abramović’s work, he also includes a brief history of occult … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade: Opening Belgrade’s Chakras

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (69): Streamline Modern at Craftsmen’s Hall and PRIZAD

Bogdan Nestorović was the son of the one of the most prolific Serbian arhcitects, Nikola Nestorović. He prusued his architectural education in Paris in 1920s where he developed a penchant for Art Deco (more precisely Streamline Modern) which characterised his two most monumental buildings: the Craftsmen’s Hall (aka Radio Beograd) and PRIZAD (aka Tanjug). Both buildings have a very intriguing history worth dedicating separate articles … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (69): Streamline Modern at Craftsmen’s Hall and PRIZAD

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (68): Automobile museum, Sablja Dimiskija and my disappearing neighbourhood

Through life, one develops but then has to abandon a nostalgic, protective attitude towards things in one’s life, especially places. Any living city is constantly changing, and cherished nooks and crannies, those that remind you of the best of times and people, have to make way.While it is normal to try to protect what is deemed valuable, one has to realize that it is, after … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (68): Automobile museum, Sablja Dimiskija and my disappearing neighbourhood

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Best of Belgrade, Guide to Belgrade, Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (67): Swimming palaces of Belgrade

Maybe it is the shimmer of the water, maybe it is the people around them, or perhaps it is chlorine or sunstroke, but swimming pools, and especially public pools, have a magical, surreal touch to them. It is no wonder they inspired a lot of great art from Hockney’s Bigger splash, to Cheever’s excellent (yet dark) tale of a man who decided to swim his … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (67): Swimming palaces of Belgrade

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Hidden Belgrade, Uncategorized

Hidden Belgrade (66): SIVilisational decline

For a very long time, SIV, for me, was just a drab government building. While I passed it fairly often, unthinkingly, on my regular walks between old Zemun, much like the whole of New Belgrade – with the exception of Sava Centar – it was unremarkable, melding into the grey mass of what I (and many around me) termed as “uninspiring socialist architecture”, something that … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (66): SIVilisational decline

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Balkanska posla, Hidden Belgrade, Politics, Serbia, The Belgradist

Zenit: 100 Years of Esoteric Balkan Barbarism

„Break the chains that bind us! Crumble the suburbs of huge and diseased Western-European cities! Crush the glass of the gilded palaces Tall towers – of National Stock Markets and Banks! War profiteers escape into the fat bellies! Hide your bought mistresses into your dirty pockets! Do you have no shame?! And you blind mothers and dumb fathers, who sell your virginal Daughters! And you … Continue reading Zenit: 100 Years of Esoteric Balkan Barbarism

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (65): Three forgotten townhouses

Belgrade’s democratic and indomitable spirit is probably to credit (or blame, depending on who you ask, and what you think) for frequent turnovers of its elites. For example, in just one neighbourhood, playful Ottoman townhouses of Zerek – currently referred to as Dorćol – in which the Muslim merchants languored on divans – gave way to mostly sober neoclassical houses of late 19th and early … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (65): Three forgotten townhouses

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Best of Belgrade, Culture, Hidden Belgrade, Reviews, The Belgradist, Uncategorized

Belgrade Post-Modern: Ruins at the End of History

“The only way for us to become great, or even inimitable if possible, is to imitate the ancients.” Johann Joachim Winckelmann  “As is the case with the weather: rain and storms from the West reached us and so did Postmodernism. At the very beginning of Postmodernism, a great conference was held in Zagreb on that topic, which identified vectors and positive values ​​of the movement … Continue reading Belgrade Post-Modern: Ruins at the End of History

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Hidden Belgrade, Politics, Serbia, The Belgradist

Occupation in 2-6 Pictures (2): Strahinja Janjić – a traitor’s traitor

On July 28th  1942, 36 year old Strahinja Janjić was taken to the infamous Banjica camp, on the charge of planning to assassinate Milan Nedić, the head of the puppet government that was helping the Germans control “German occupied territory of Serbia”. Banjica, ran in tandem by the Gestapo and Nedić’s government, claimed more than 3,800 lives and was the place where anti-fascist Serbs, Jews … Continue reading Occupation in 2-6 Pictures (2): Strahinja Janjić – a traitor’s traitor

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (64): The Cursed Ghost Ship

Having been in a bit of a wedding frenzy over the past few days, I thought about the history of what I thought was one of the most beautiful and doomed wedding presents in Serbia: the “Dragor” river yacht, which I once read was a belated gift of the Romanian royal family to their daughter Marija on the occasion of her marriage to King Aleksandar … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (64): The Cursed Ghost Ship

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Hidden Belgrade, Serbia

Homosexuality in Serbia through the Ages

One of my first encounters with the concept of other sexualities was when, as kid visiting my grandmother`s tiny summer house in Montenegro I was walking around the yard and pointed to a far-away house on a land neighbouring ours and asked who lived there. „That was cousin M.`s house…“ she said, somewhat darkly, unlike her eager explanations of who else lived in the 20km … Continue reading Homosexuality in Serbia through the Ages

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (63): Finding Vračar and Belgrade’s holiest mound

On May 10 1594, the Ottoman rulers of Belgrade decided to make sure to make the point to their Serbian subjects that any resistance to their rule is futile. The reason was the first massive uprising against the Ottoman rule in Banat, which erupted in the spring of that year, motivated by the victories of Habsburg forces against the Ottoman army, which 73 years before … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (63): Finding Vračar and Belgrade’s holiest mound

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Hidden Belgrade

Hidden Belgrade (62): The End

My first memory of cemeteries were incessant visits to my grandad’s grave at Belgrade’s New Cemetery what I was a little boy. My grandad passed away at the age of 65 in the middle of the greatest economic crisis in Serbia in 1993 and, even though I was five, I remember my grandma trying to honour his memory by making sure we properly arranged a … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (62): The End

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Occupation in 2-6 Pictures: Beginning

On this day 80 years ago, 6 April 1941, my great-grandparents’s flat in Vuka Karadžića street in Belgrade was torn in two by the Nazi bombs. On the same day, their relative, who was a child at the time was almost killed in the debris the Stukas made of an air-raid shelter by the Ascension church. A few days later, as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia … Continue reading Occupation in 2-6 Pictures: Beginning

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Belgrade Erotic Epic

Given it is Spring and the birds and bees and slowly appearing, here are a few (in)famous places in Belgrade, which shaped the sex life of the city. Oriental allure One of the best books about the life of sex workers in early to mid 19th century Belgrade is undoubtedly “Kata Nesiba i komentari” by Ivan Janković. Janković, a famous Belgrade activist and legal scholar … Continue reading Belgrade Erotic Epic

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (61): Old School Belgarde

Ever since the First Serbian uprising in 1804, education was a major component in building the nation, as well as its identity, in large thanks to the two major personages of Serbian Enlightenment: Dositej Obradović and Vuk Karadžić. The first major educational institution was the Great School, which was operational between 1809 and 1813. It was devised by Obradović and attended by Karadžić and was … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (61): Old School Belgarde

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (60): The sacred tree of Bulbulder

Ever since the ancient times, some trees and plants were regarded as holy by the Serbs and all other Slavs. Although Serbs were mostly Christianised in the 9th century, many of the old customs remained and were incorporated into Christian holiday rituals – such as burning of an oak tree branch on Christmas eve – especially after St Sava secured autocephaly (autonomy) of the Serbian … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (60): The sacred tree of Bulbulder

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Zemun

A vibrant city for itself for much of its history, Zemun is chock-full of history and quirky places, from its underground tunnels to a rather eerie stairway made of gravestones. Although settled since pre-history, it first entered recorded history as Taurunum when it was founded by the same Celtic tribe which founded Belgrade, Scordisci in 2nd BC. It was settled due to its great strategic … Continue reading Hidden Zemun

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Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist

Hidden Belgrade (59): Yugoslavia’s Crib

Due to many destructions brought upon Serbia, there are a few houses that have been standing long enough and have been important enough to tell the story of the country’s history (and various incarnations). Thankfully however, one of them is located bang in the heart of Belgrade, at Terazije. One of the first works by one of Serbia’s first starchitects, Jovan Ilkić, this Neo-baroque house … Continue reading Hidden Belgrade (59): Yugoslavia’s Crib

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Guide to Belgrade, Hidden Belgrade, The Belgradist, Uncategorized

Making an entrance, Belgrade style

Entrances to buildings in Belgrade used to be stages where architects showed their utmost creativity in the interwar period. They were designed to woo potential tentants to buy or rent by making a block of flats look like a private castle, or to impose the serious nature of a company or official building. Some of my favourites were built while Belgrade modernism (local variant of … Continue reading Making an entrance, Belgrade style

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