Travel Guide to Belgrade, Serbia

The best hotels, restaurants, cafes, shops and cultural spots in the city

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On Knez Mihailova in the city's downtown, sidewalk cafes sit in the shade of 19th-century mansions. Designers have turned a long-abandoned shopping arcade into the Belgrade Design District, where indie boutiques sell draped dresses and punk-inspired jewelry. On summer weekends, the streets of hipper neighborhoods are as full at 3 a.m. as at 8 p.m. You might have to wait hours for a table at the waterfront restaurants in the suburb of Zemun, but never mind—the spicy Serbian wines served at the bars will keep you occupied.VISITORS TO BELGRADE often hesitate to tell friends about the city's charms. In the calm of the last decade, the capital of Serbia has experienced a cultural explosion and today it feels distinctly like Europe's best-kept secret.
By European standards, Belgrade is architecturally new. A strategic outpost at the confluence of the Sava and Danube Rivers, it has been fought over for eons. When the Serbs gained control in the late 19th century, much of the city was razed and rebuilt, leaving a landscape that's part romantic Prague, part midcentury modern, part still under construction.
In spaces that were left to languish after Yugoslavia's breakup, there are now galleries, design shops, restaurants, concert spaces and hybrids like Grad, a warehouse that hosts art exhibits, public debates and Buddhist meditation sessions—and has a garden cocktail bar. Many such amalgams are tucked into apartment blocks or gritty storefronts in the Savamala area. They lack websites but reverberate with energy, retaining a sense of the Old World while celebrating a new one.