Belgrade

Quick Facts
Status:	Capital and largest city of Serbia and the Serbia-Montenegro (formerly known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia).
Location:	44° 48' N and 20° 28' E; at the crossing of the Sava and Danube Rivers.
Population:	1.6 million
Industry:	Prior to 1999 bombings, a center for production of machinery, electrical equipment, textiles. Also government, trade, academic, and cultural center.

This hilly city is located where the Sava and Danube rivers cross. Its strategic location in the Balkans has made it the epitome of the changing control over the Balkan lands -- a crossroads between eastern and western religions and political ideologies. Indeed Belgrade has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times that very little of its contemporary appearance reveals its long history.

The Celts founded the first settlement here in the 4th century B.C. Under Roman occupation around the time of Christ, the city was called Singindunum and it became one of the earliest episcopal centers as Rome accepted Christianity.

But Singindunum's strategic location between East and West made it open to invasion. When the Huns invaded Europe from Asia in the 5th century A.D., Singindunum was destroyed. Less than 100 years later, Roman Emperor Justinian rebuilt the city. A century after that, the Slavs arrived in the Balkans and took over the town. It was then that it was named Beograd (literally "White Town").

As the Serbs accepted Eastern Orthodoxy in the 9th century, a series of Serbian dynasties ruled under the same ideologies that predominated throughout Byzantium. In the 13th century, Belgrade became the capital of Serbia under King Dragutin who is still regarded as a symbol of Orthodoxy in the region. In the 14th century, Stefan Dusan proclaimed himself Emperor and some Serbs believe that, by placing himself at an equivalent level to the Byzantine Emperor, Dusan ensured the decline of Serbia and its capital.

Indeed Belgrade remained vulnerable to domination by various outside groups. Its strategic location between the capitals of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires made it susceptible to domination by both. In the 15th century, the city was invaded by Turkish armies, which had only recently conquered Constantinople. Belgrade was defended by its citizens, as well as peasant armies from Hungary, but ultimately fell to the Ottoman Empire. It would be renamed Darol-i-Jihad (literally "Home of Wars of Faith") and remain under Turkish rule until 1867.

In spite of its independence in the mid-19th century, Belgrade would still remain a prize for foreign occupation. In 1914, after Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Pricip assassinated the Austrian heir to the throne (an event which sparked the First World War), Austrian troops occupied Belgrade.

Following the war, Belgrade became the capital of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929). But it again was occupied during the Second World War by the Germans. On a single day in 1941, Nazi bombs killed 25,000 people in Belgrade. After the Second World War, Belgrade rebuilt itself once again and became the capital of socialist Yugoslavia.

After Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Macedonia seceded from Yugoslavia in 1991-92, Belgrade remained the capital of the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (comprised of Serbia and Montenegro).

Unlike Zagreb and Sarajevo, the Serbian capital city was largely untouched by the wars of the early 1990s. In spite of devastating international economic and political sanctions, Belgrade managed to maintain its business as a political and cultural center.

In late 1996, many Serbs took to the streets of Belgrade in pro-democracy protests. However, their movement failed to overturn the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

In March 1999, Belgrade again returned to the international map. In response to Serbian actions against Albanians in Kosovo, NATO forces bombed Yugoslavia's capital city.

Zora and her family -- Serbs from Croatia -- fled from their former home in Zagreb to Belgrade where they live as internally displaced people.