Kalemegdan Park

The Kalemegdan Park (Serbian: Калемегдански парк / Kalemegdanski park), or simply Kalemegdan (Serbian Cyrillic: Калемегдан) is the largest park and the most important historical monument in Belgrade. It is located on a 125-metre-high (410 ft) cliff, at the junction of the River Sava and the Danube.

Kalemegdan Park, split in two as the Great and Little Parks, was developed in the area that once was the town field within the Belgrade Fortress. Today residents often erroneously refer to the entire fortress as the Kalemegdan Fortress or just Kalemegdan, even though the park occupies the smaller part, especially of the historical fortress, and it is some two millennia younger. The fortress, including the Kalemegdan, represents a cultural monument of exceptional importance (from 1979), the area where various sport, cultural and arts events take place, for all generations of Belgraders and numerous visitors of the city.

The name is formed from the two Turkish words: kale (meaning "fortress") and meydan (meaning "plaza, square", phonetically shifted to "megdan" in Serbian). Originally, it was an empty strip of land, from the Sava to the Danube (hence the name). It was used by the Ottoman army as the training ground, ceremonial military review location and the gathering point of the army before the battles. Several meters wide strip also separated the strictly military section of the fortress from the civilian houses.

As such, the field was neglected for centuries. Bohemian writer Siegfried Kapper visited Belgrade in 1850 and in his 1853 book Südslavische Wanderungen (Roaming through the South Slavic lands) wrote: "I wandered off in the Turkish part of the city...and I reached some large, green meadow. It was Kalemegdan, the open field which separates city from the fortress. The appearance of the field is quite rugged. The terrain is uneven and rocky. No tree or shrub can prosper here. The grass is dry...and bones of dead horses and cattle are scattered over it. But so much better is the view, which widely spreads over both river and their banks".

According to diplomat Kosta Hristić, the Kalemegdan was full of dogs, some feral, and was dangerous to pass through. Still, the several historical events occurred there. Ruling prince Miloš Obrenović accepted the 1859 beratlı, by which the Ottoman sultan confirmed his second accession to the throne. During the Čukur Fountain incident in 1862, as the fighting between Serbs and Ottomans happened in the vicinity, British and Russian consuls in Belgrade relocated to the tents in Kalemegdan, to have better insight in the situation. When the Ottomans fully withdrew from Serbia in 1867, the Turkish pasha handed over the keys to the city to the ruling prince Mihajlo Obrenović.

The area was not cultivated immediately after the Turkish withdrawal. The first works on arranging the town field Kalemegdan started in 1869. Though not the oldest park in Belgrade, it is the one which is being continually groomed and attended the longest. The area of the town field was sort of a buffer zone between the fortress and the settlement outside of the Laudon trench, which separated the Turkish and the Serbian sections of Belgrade. The idea of turning the area into the park came from Belgrade's first trained urbanist, Emilijan Josimović, who in 1869 basically constructed modern Knez Mihailova Street. Prior to that, only a short part of what is today Knez Mihailova, called "Delijska street", actually existed as a street. Josimović successfully transformed the existing incomplete trail into the proper street which directly connected downtown Belgrade with the fortress, thus establishing a direct communication between the inner and outer neighborhoods. Josimović then proposed that Kalemegdan, as now Knez Mihailova ended at it, should be transformed into "gorgeous park", as he considered parks in general "air reservoirs". Later, architect Aleksandar Bugarski who was also a landscape architect continued to improve on the work of Josimović.

King Milan ordered the levelling of the terrain in the eastern sections of the fortress and planting of the greenery and trees, which in time developed into the Kalemegdan Park. He was inspired by the parks he saw in France. First phase of the forestation lasted until 1875 and included planting of the trees beneath the fortress' ramparts and in the Upper Town. The arranging of the main Sava alley, above the river, began in 1886. Most extensive works in the park were done from 1890. During March 1891, the pathways were cut through, and trees were planted; in 1903 the Small Staircase was built, based on the project of Jelisaveta Načić, the first woman architect in Serbia, while the Big Staircase, designed by architect Aleksandar Krstić, was built in 1928.

Area at the top of the Little Kalemegdan, which is occupied by the Cvijeta Zuzorić Art Pavilion today, was an open fairground for a long time. The very first recorded circus in Belgrade settled here in 1845. Sources from the period claim this was the first time the Belgraders saw an elephant. In 1869, a Tunisian circus with 18 acts, performed at Kalemegdan. Later, the fairground became permanent. Tents were placed, with numerous attractions: panoptikum or collections of curios, okular ("funny" ocular lenses), magicians, fortune tellers, illusionists, etc. Ilija Božić performed here the very first Serbian puppet show, Kuku, Todore. In the mid-1920s the fair was displaced to Voždovac, an eastern suburb at the time, due to the impending construction of the art pavilion. As the new location was too distant for most of the Belgraders, the fair was soon disbanded. The circuses and fairs were so popular, the National Theatre in Belgrade asked for them to be banned from the city during the theatrical season.