New Belgrade (, ) is a municipality of the city of Belgrade. It was a planned city and now is the central business district of Serbia and South East Europe. Construction began in 1948 in a previously uninhabited area on the left bank of the Sava river, opposite old Belgrade. In recent years, it has become the central business district of Belgrade and its fastest developing area, with many businesses moving to the new part of the city, due to more modern infrastructure and larger available space. With 209,763 inhabitants, it is the second most populous municipality of Serbia after Novi Sad.
Geography
New Belgrade is located on the left bank of the Sava River, in the easternmost part of the Srem region. Administratively, its northeastern section touches the right bank of the Danube, right before its confluence with the Sava. New Belgrade is located generally west of 'Old' Belgrade, to which it is connected by six bridges (Ada Bridge, New Railway Bridge, Old Railway Bridge, Gazela, Old Sava Bridge and Branko's Bridge). European route E75, with five grade separations, including a new double-looped one at the Belgrade Arena, goes right through the middle of the settlement.
The municipality of New Belgrade covers an area of . Its terrain is flat, which poses a high contrast to the old Belgrade, built on 32 hills total. Except for its western section, Bežanija, New Belgrade is built on what was essentially a swamp when construction of the new city began in 1948. For years, kilometers-long conveyor belts transported sand to the new settlement from the Danube island of Malo Ratno Ostrvo, almost completely destroying the island in the process, leaving only a small, narrow strip of wooded land. Thus, it is romantically said that New Belgrade is actually built on an island.
Other geographic features of New Belgrade are the peninsula of Mala Ciganlija and the island of Ada Međica, both on the Sava, and the bay of Zimovnik (winter shelter), engulfed by Mala Ciganlija, with the facilities of the Beograd shipyard. The loess slope of Bežanijska Kosa is located in the western part of the municipality, while in the southern, the Galovica river canal flows into the Sava.
Though it originally had no forests in the real sense, Novi Beograd now has more green areas than all the other municipalities of Belgrade, with a total of , or 8.5% of the territory. In time, several areas of the municipality developed into fully fledged forests, and three were officially classified as such: the forest along the motorway (), the forest along the Sava Quay () and the forest on Ada Međica (). Most of the municipality's green areas, however, are within the large Ušće park. The latest addition to the Belgrade park system (in 2008), Park Republika Srpska, is also located in the municipality.
There are no separate settlements within the municipality, as the entire area administratively belongs to Belgrade City proper and is statistically classified as part of Belgrade (Beograd-deo). The area located around the municipal assembly building and the nearby roundabout is considered to be New Belgrade's center.
As it was planned and constructed, New Belgrade was divided into blocks. Currently, there are 72 blocks (with several sub-blocks, like 70-a, etc.). The old core of the village of Bežanija, Ada Međica, Mala Ciganlija, as well as the area along the highway west of Bežanijska Kosa, are not divided into blocks. Due to changes in administrative borders, some of the blocks (9, 9-a, 9-b, 11, 11-c and 50) belong to the municipality of Zemun, extending north of New Belgrade as one continuous built-up area.
In September 2018, Belgrade's mayor Zoran Radojičić announced that the construction of a dam on the Danube, in the Zemun-New Belgrade area, would start soon. The dam is designed to protect the city during high water levels. Such a project had not been mentioned before, nor was it clear how or where it would be constructed, or if it were feasible at all. Radojičić clarified after a while that he was referring to the temporary, mobile flood wall. The wall will be high and long, stretching from Branko's Bridge across the Sava and the neighborhood of Ušće, to the Radecki restaurant on the Danube bank in Zemun's Gardoš neighborhood. In case of emergency, panels will be placed on the existing construction. The construction is scheduled to start in 2019 and to finish in 2020.
History Early history
Bežanija is the oldest part of today's New Belgrade. A settlement existed here from the Neolithic to the Roman period.
In the book Kruševski pomenik from 1713, which is kept in the Dobrun monastery near Višegrad, the settlement of Bežanija was mentioned for the first time under its present name in 1512, as a small village with 32 houses, populated by Serbs. In this time, the village was under the administration of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, and was part of Syrmia County. The inhabitants of the village crossed the Sava river and settled in Syrmia after fleeing the fall of the medieval Serbian Despotate at the hands of the Ottoman Empire (hence the name bežanija, "refugee camp" in archaic Serbian).
In 1521, the village became part of the Ottoman Empire. From 1527 to 1530, Bežanija was part of Radoslav Čelnik's Duchy of Syrmia, an Ottoman vassal, until its subsequent organization into the Ottoman Sanjak of Syrmia. The Habsburg monarchy conquered it temporarily during the Great Turkish War (1689–1691), but it remained under Ottoman administration until 1718. In 1718, the village became part of the Habsburg monarchy and was placed under military administration. It was part of the Habsburg Military Frontier (Petrovaradin regiment of Slavonian Krajina). During the 17th and 18th century, hunger and constant Turkish intrusions devastated the village, but it was constantly repopulated by refugees from central Serbia.
During the 1717–1739 Austrian occupation of northern Serbia, when both banks of the Sava were Austrian, a massive process of construction works in Belgrade began. The goal was to transform Belgrade into a Baroque city, rather than an oriental one. The task of designing the new city was given to Nicolas Doxat de Démoret. In his plans, Doxat envisioned the proper, star-shaped fortification on the location of modern New Belgrade, across the Belgrade Fortress. Despite the maps printed with the existing fortification, the ramparts in the swamp were never built, though some work was done on the construction.
In 1810, a population census counted 115, mostly Serbian, households in Bežanija. By the 1850s, a large number of Germans had colonized Bežanija. In 1848–1849 it was part of the Serbian Vojvodina, an ethnic Serb autonomous region within the Austrian Empire, but in 1849 it was again placed under the administration of the Military Frontier.
As the Frontier was abolished in 1881–1882, it became part of the Syrmia County within the autonomous Habsburg kingdom Croatia-Slavonia, which was located within the Hungarian part of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. In 1910, the largest ethnic group in the village were Serbs, while other sizable ethnic groups were Germans, Hungarians and Croats. After the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, in autumn of 1918, Bežanija became part of the newly formed State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. On 24 November 1918, as part of Syrmia region, the village became part of the Kingdom of Serbia, and on December 1, it became part of the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (future Yugoslavia).
From 1918 to 1922, the village was part of the Syrmia County, and from 1922 to 1929 it was part of the Syrmia Oblast. Bežanija became part of the wider Belgrade area for the first time in 1929 after the coup d'état conducted by the king Alexander I of Yugoslavia, who redrew Yugoslavia's administrative divisions, creating a new administrative unit Uprava grada Beograda or Administration of the City of Belgrade which comprised Belgrade, Zemun (with Bežanija) and Pančevo.
Inter-war period Between the two world wars of the 20th century, communities sprung up closer to the Sava river, in Staro Sajmište and Novo Naselje. The idea of building a new settlement across the Sava was officially presented in 1922 and the first urbanization plans for Belgrade's expansion to the Sava's left bank were drawn up in 1923, but a lack of either funds or the manpower needed to drain out the swampy terrain put them on hold indefinitely. Additionally, the Ministry of Construction rejected the city's plan of expansion. The project was conceived by Đorđe Kovljanski and it included an idea of creating an island from the Savamala neighborhood (he coined the term "Sava amphitheatre") in old Belgrade. He even envisioned the bridge across the northern tip of Ada Ciganlija, across the Sava, which was finally built in 2012. In 1924 Petar Kokotović opened a kafana on Tošin Bunar with the prophetic name Novi Beograd. After 1945, Kokotović was president of the local community of Novo Naselje–Bežanija, which later grew into the municipality of Novi Beograd. In 1924 an airport was built in Bežanija, and in 1928 the Rogožerski factory was constructed. In 1934 plans were expanded to include the creation of a new urbanized area connecting Belgrade and Zemun, as Zemun was administratively annexed to the city of Belgrade in 1929, losing its separate city status in 1934. King Alexander Bridge was also built over the Sava River and a tram line connecting Belgrade and Zemun was established. Also, a Zemun airport was built.
A sandy beach with cabins, kafanas and barracks used as sheds by fishermen occupied the area of the modern Ušće quay, north of Branko's Bridge. It was one of the favorite vacation spots of Belgraders during the Interbellum period. People traveled there from the city by small boats; the starting point was the small kafana "Malo pristanište" in Savamala. Occupying the left bank of the Sava, it was in the location of the future access ramp for the King Alexander Bridge, so it had to be removed. Several properties were demolished, including numerous kafanas, including "Ostend", "Zdravlje", "Abadžija", "Jadran", "Krf", "Dubrovnik", and "Adrija." The only one that wasn't demolished was "Nica", predecessor of the modern Ušće restaurant. In total, 20 buildings and 2,000 cabins, barracks, or sheds were demolished, jointly by the municipalities of Zemun and Bežanija, which owned half of the land each, and the property owners. The plan was to build an embankment instead. However, the beach itself survived the construction of the bridge in 1934 as it only made access easier. The beach was finally closed in 1938 when the construction of the embankment began. The beach itself was called Nica (Serbian for Nice, in France) after one of the kafanas.