Vračar
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Vračar

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Vračar

Vračar (Serbian Cyrillic: Врачар, pronounced [v̞rǎt͡ʃaːr]) is an affluent urban area and municipality of the city of Belgrade known as the location of many embassies and museums. According to the 2022 census results, the municipality has a population of 55,406 inhabitants.

With an area of only 287 hectares (710 acres), it is the smallest of all Belgrade's (and Serbian) municipalities, but also the most densely populated. Vračar is one of the three municipalities that constitute the very center area of Belgrade, together with Savski Venac and Stari Grad. It is an affluent municipality, having one of the most expensive real estate prices within Belgrade, and has the highest proportion of university educated inhabitants compared to all other Serbian municipalities. One of the most famous landmarks in Belgrade, the Saint Sava Church is located in Vračar.

Vračar borders five other Belgrade municipalities: Voždovac to the south, Zvezdara to the east, Palilula to the northeast, Stari Grad to the north and Savski Venac to the west. It is generally bounded by the three boulevards: Boulevard of Liberation, Southern Boulevard and the Boulevard of King Aleksandar.

Though today the smallest municipality of Belgrade, historically Vračar occupied much larger territory. It was divided in three parts: East Vračar, which roughly occupies the modern municipality, West Vračar which is today a local community (sub-municipal unit) within the municipality of Savski Venac and Great Vračar, which is today known as Zvezdara, though the local community of Vračarsko Polje (Vračar Field) retained its name within the Zvezdara municipality.

The neighborhood of Vračar is located on the top of the Vračar plateau, partially in the easternmost section of the municipality of Savski Venac as a result of a series of administrative changes of municipal boundaries after World War II. Despite its small area, being located less than a kilometer away from downtown (Terazije) it borders many other Belgrade neighborhoods: the square and neighborhood of Slavija to the north, Palilula to the northeast, Čubura and Gradić Pejton to the east, Neimar to the south and the park and neighborhood of Karađorđev Park to the southwest.

With 132 metres (433 feet), Vračar plateau is one of the highest points in downtown Belgrade, which is generally built on a hilly terrain (32 hills altogether). The top of the hill was flattened and turned into the plateau when earth from the top was used to cover and drain the pond on Slavija, in the western foothills of the Vračar hill. Almost no geographical features survive today as the area is completely urbanized, except for the small section of Karađorđev Park on the southern slopes of the plateau. Some much larger parks, like major portion of Karađorđev Park or parks Manjež and Tašmajdan are left just outside the Vračar's administrative borders.

The most dominant feature of modern Vračar is the massive Church of Saint Sava. Its decades long, troubled construction shaped not only the present appearance of the plateau but also the entire skyline of Belgrade. The plateau has been reshaped in the early 2000s, with fountains, marble access roads to the church with pillars, and playgrounds added, while the already existing monument to the leader of the First Serbian Uprising, Karađorđe, was erected on a low, artificial hillock. The plateau is also the location of the National Library of Serbia and Karađorđev Park begins here, with the craftsmen settlement of Gradić Pejton and the bohemian quarter of Čubura nearby.

Vračar (derived from Serbian word vrač meaning the 'medicine man', 'healer') was first mentioned in 1440, during the siege of Belgrade by the Ottoman sultan Murad II. Ottoman map from 1492 mentions Vračar as a tower. In 1560 it is mentioned as the Christian village outside the fortress of Kalemegdan with 17 houses. It is believed this village is the place where in 1595 the Turkish grand vizier Sinan Pasha burned at the stake the remains of Saint Sava, a major Serbian saint, to pacify and punish a rebellious population.

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