One
of the oldest cities in Europe and possibly
the world, the City of Belgrade is the
capital of Serbia and has a population
over 1,700,000. It is located on the outfall
of the Sava river to the Danube river
in northern-central part of the country,
and is gaining prominence as a “world
city” after its release from the
Warsaw Pact at the end of the Cold War.
The history of city of the City of Belgrade
starts sometime around 300 BCE, when the
Roman settlers named it Singidunum. As
the Roman Empire fell, giving way to the
Byzantine Empire the area became unstable
and the city was invaded by a succession
of conquerors. These included the Huns,
the Sarmatians, the Ostrogoths and the
Avars. In 630 CE it was invaded by the
Serbian people, who renamed the city “Beligrad”
in 878 CE (meaning “white city”).
During this time the city was passed from
Byzantine rule to Bulgarian rule, before
gaining independence and joining the medieval
Serbian Kingdom.
The city changed hands again in 1521 when
it was captured by the Ottoman Turks.
It would remain under their rule until
the 1700s, when Belgrade was captured
again, this time by the Austrians. The
battles would rage back and forth for
over one hundred years until the Serbs
rose up against the Ottoman Turks in 1817.
They would not gain self-government (in
one form or another) until 1915, when
they were invaded by the Austro-Hungarian
Empire and Germany. Serbia was then folded
into the country known as Yugoslavia,
but it retained its own unique identity
and purpose.
After
the First World War and the disillusion
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Serbia
(as part of Yugoslavia) and Belgrade would
see growth and peace until they were AGAIN
invaded by the Germans in World War Two;
Hitler’s forces would make their
push into Serbia in his 1941 offensives,
as a stepping stone to get into Russia.
By 1944 Russia was on the offensive and
Hitler on the retreat. Belgrade was liberated/occupied
by the then Soviet Army, and the city
was restored to the now “communist
Yugoslavia”. Yugoslavia remained
part of the Warsaw pact until the 1990s,
when Yugoslavia gained its independence.
In the years following Yugoslavia’s
emergence from the cold war it broke up
into its component parts, one of which
was Serbia. Serbia then named Belgrade
as its capital, forming a new independent
government. The country then became involved
in the Kosovo War in 1999, when Belgrade
saw heavy bombing. It saw heavy bombing
again during the NATO offensives in the
following years. Belgrade has been under
some form of attack some 54 times since
1 BCE, or every 37 years on average. This
means that, statistically, every citizen
of Belgrade has seen two attacks on the
city in their lifetime for the last 2000
years.
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