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Belgrade sits at the confluence of the Danube and the Sava rivers, a geographical position that made it one of the most contested places in European history. The city has been razed 44 times and earned the nickname the White Phoenix not out of vanity but out of hard necessity. Kalemegdan, the great fortress on the limestone bluff above the two rivers, has Roman foundations, medieval Serbian towers, Ottoman walls, and Austrian-era additions, and walking its ramparts on a clear day you can see far into what was, for centuries, always someone else's territory approaching.

Modern Belgrade was shaped by radical reinvention.

After the Second World War, the city became the capital of Yugoslavia and the host of the first Non-Aligned Movement summit in 1961, cementing its position as a city that refused to take either side of the Cold War. The bohemian restaurant district of Skadarlija, with its cobblestones and traditional kafanas serving rakija and roasted meats, preserves a Balkan 19th-century atmosphere that the rest of the city did not hold onto. The Church of Saint Sava, one of the largest Orthodox churches in the world, took over a century to build and still dominates the Vračar plateau skyline.