Personal travel impressions in stories and pictures from Kalemegdan, Belgrade, Serbia. Click on the pictures to enlarge, send as a free e-card, or download for personal use. You can locate Kalemegdan and navigate the world using Google Earth
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N 44° 49.399 E 20° 27.034
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Visited: August 2009
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When entering Kalemegdan from the city side, you might at first think you are entering a nice city park. You see stalls with food and drinks, souvenirs and toys, Serbs taking a break on one of the many benches, there are plenty of trees and fountains, children playing and people talking to each other and updating each other with the latest developments in life, while others are reading a newspaper. As you walk on towards the north, you realize there is more to Kalemegdan than just a park. Actually, there is much more to it. You come across the Monument of Gratitude to France: a thank-you from the Serbs to the French who fought on the side of Serbia in the First World War. The pillared monument topped with a woman symbolizing France is surrounded by a neatly sculpted garden.
From here, walls rise up, and when you walk through one of the gates in those walls the other function of Kalemegdan comes out. This actually was a settlement many thousands of years ago - it is thought that the first people lived here some 8,000 years ago, making it one of the oldest settlements in Europe. Its strategic location, overlooking the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, made it the perfect location for building a fortress and a military stronghold. In fact, it has been so for the Celts, the Romans, Slavs, Hungarians, Ottomans, Austrians, and many other people ever since. Obviously, this also meant that the area has been under attack, and indeed, it is claimed 115 battles have been fought over Kalemegdan, and the fortress has been destroyed 44 times - it has always been rebuilt. The name Kalemegdan derives from Turkish and translates loosely to "Fortress field", referring to the wide area around the fortress from where the enemy could easily be fought.
For some time, the city here was inside the walls of the fortification. It was only later that Belgrade, or the White City, would develop outside the walls of the fortification of Kalemegdan. Nowadays, you can find many different reminders of its rich and long history inside the fortress. The clock tower, built by the Austrians, a mausoleum for a Turkish vizier, a Roman well, many different gates and towers that were all part of the old fortification, remains of a Turkish hammam, but also the 20th century Victor monument and modern art. At the northern side of Kalemegdan, the views over the surrounding areas, the rivers Sava and Danube, are the best you can get. From here, it is possible to walk down the other side; it is only when you are walking at the bottom of Kalemegdan fortress that you realize that the location of the fortress indeed made it difficult to conquer.
