Belgrade, the fortress where two rivers meet

Some cities are where they are by accident. Belgrade is where it is because of geography. On the eastern edge of the great Pannonian plain, the River Sava comes in from the west and flows into the Danube, and above the meeting of the two a long limestone ridge looks out over both. Anyone who held that ridge controlled the rivers, the plain to the north and the roads to the south, and so, for most of its history, somebody has been trying to take it.

The name means the White City, and the old fortress on the ridge is the reason to come.

Kalemegdan

The Belgrade Fortress, with the park around it known as Kalemegdan, is a layered thing, as a place fought over for two thousand years would be. The Celts were here; then the Romans, who called the settlement Singidunum and, in the late first century AD, made it the base of a legion, the IV Flavia. In late antiquity it was destroyed again and again by Goths and Huns, then rebuilt by Byzantines, Serbs and Hungarians. In 1521 it fell to the Ottoman Empire, and for the next three centuries it changed hands between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs several times, so that what stands today is mostly the work of eighteenth-century military engineers on top of medieval and Roman foundations.

It has not been a smooth history, and the fortress does not pretend otherwise. You walk through gates of different centuries, along walls rebuilt in different styles, past an Ottoman tomb, a clock tower and medieval gates, and up to bastions with views over the water.

The Upper Town, on top of the ridge, has the best of the views; the Lower Town runs down to the riverbank. Between them the park has paths, chess players, plane trees and, on a fine evening, half of Belgrade out for a walk.

The Victor

At the edge of the Upper Town, on a tall column above the confluence, stands the Pobednik, the Victor: a bronze male figure, naked, a falcon in one hand and a sword in the other, as symbols of peace and war. He was made by the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, commissioned in 1913, and intended at first for the square of Terazije in the middle of the city. Wars and arguments intervened, and he spent years in storage; when he was finally put up, on 7 October 1928, it was here, to mark the tenth anniversary of the breakthrough on the Salonika front in the First World War. He looks out over the rivers rather than the city, which has always seemed right.

From his feet the view is one of the best in the Balkans. Below you, the Sava runs into the Danube; across the Sava is New Belgrade, the planned city of the socialist era; across the Danube, the wooded Great War Island, now a nature reserve, and beyond it the plain. At sunset, when the whole city seems to come up to the walls to watch, the light goes down over the water and the bridges.

The city below

Belgrade itself is not a pretty city in the way Prague or Vienna is: it has been bombed and rebuilt too often for that. But it is a lively one. From the fortress, Knez Mihailova, the pedestrian street, runs into the centre; the old bohemian quarter of Skadarlija keeps its cobbles and its restaurants with music; and down on the rivers, the floating bars and restaurants of the riverbanks are a Belgrade institution.

Serbia beyond Belgrade

Most holidays that reach Belgrade are tours of the Balkans, and Novi Sad, an hour or so north on the Danube, often comes with it. It is a gentler, more Central European city, with the great Petrovaradin fortress on the far bank of the river.

Just You's twelve-night Balkan Explorer, for solo travellers, starts in Bucharest and crosses Bulgaria, by way of Veliko Tarnovo and Sofia, and North Macedonia, with Skopje, before entering Serbia at Niš and continuing to Belgrade and Novi Sad, then back into Romania for Timisoara, Sibiu, Brasov, Zarnesti and Bran.

Travelsphere's twelve-night Balkan Highlights comes from the other direction: from Split, Zadar, the Plitvice Lakes and Zagreb in Croatia to Novi Sad and Belgrade, then south to Zlatibor and Višegrad and into Bosnia and Herzegovina for Sarajevo, Mostar and Medugorje, ending at Trogir.

Explore's fifteen-night Grand Tour of Romania, Serbia & Bulgaria joins Bucharest, Sinaia, Bran Castle, Moieciu, Brasov, Sibiu and Corvin Castle in Romania to Orsova on the Danube, the Roman site of Viminacium, Belgrade, Novi Sad and Devil's Town, a field of eroded earth pillars in the south of Serbia. It departs from April to October.

Whichever route brings you, keep an evening for the fortress. Walk up through the park in the late afternoon, find a place on the walls near the Victor, and wait for the sun to go down over the meeting of the rivers. That view is why the city exists.