Creative Belgrade: Europe’s untapped creative capital

About Creative Belgrade: Europe’s untapped creative capital

London, Paris and Berlin have priced most of their artists out of the centre. Belgrade has not. Painters, writers, actors and musicians still live, work and argue in the heart of the city, and a visitor can feel it everywhere: in the violinist on Knez Mihailova, the band at the next table in a Skadarlija kafana, the jazz drifting from a river barge on the Danube and the queue for a premiere at the National Theatre.

A city that never stopped making art

Belgrade has been a meeting place of cultures for centuries, and its art reflects it: Byzantine icons and Central European painting, Ottoman-era kafana songs and Viennese waltzes, Yugoslav modernism and the avant-garde. The University of Arts brings together faculties of music, fine arts, applied arts and drama, so every year a new generation of painters, composers, actors and designers graduates into the city and, unusually for a European capital, can afford to stay.

That is Belgrade’s secret. Rents and the cost of living are still a fraction of those in Western capitals, so artists keep studios in Dorćol and Savamala, rehearse in old warehouses and meet in the same cafés and kafanas their predecessors did. The arts here are not a museum piece; they are part of everyday life.

In Belgrade, the artists never left the centre.

Music everywhere

Walk through the old town on a summer evening and you hear it before you see it: a violinist or accordionist on Knez Mihailova, a tamburica band moving from table to table in Skadarlija, brass and guitars in the riverside restaurants of the Zemun Quay, and jazz, rock and electronic music from the river clubs along the Sava and the Danube. In the concert halls, the Belgrade Philharmonic at the Kolarac and the opera and ballet of the National Theatre and the Madlenianum give classical music lovers evenings to rival Vienna or Budapest.

The festivals tell the same story. The Belgrade Jazz Festival has run since 1971, BEMUS brings the world’s orchestras every autumn, the Guitar Art Festival fills the city with classical guitarists each spring, and Ring Ring has championed new and experimental music for three decades.

Stage, screen and page

Belgrade is a theatre city, from the avant-garde of Atelje 212 and the international BITEF festival to the Yugoslav Drama Theatre and the musicals of the Terazije Theatre. It is a film city too, home to the Yugoslav Film Archive, one of the largest film archives in the world, and to festivals such as FEST, Beldocs, the Auteur Film Festival and the Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival, one of the oldest of its kind in Europe. And it is a city of writers, home to Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić, with one of the oldest book fairs in the region every October.

An untapped resource

For visitors, creative Belgrade is still largely undiscovered. Gallery openings are free and friendly, concert halls and theatres are full of energy, and conversation flows easily in the cafés where artists gather. For creative professionals, the city offers talent, studios, film facilities and a growing design scene, from Belgrade Design Week to the young designers of Mikser. Music and art are a crucial part of Belgrade, yet they rarely get the exposure they deserve. This section of the guide sets out to change that.

Where to start

Browse the sections below for galleries, artists, music venues, festivals, writers’ haunts, photography, film and design. Then join the conversation in The Belgrade salon, our forum for everyone who loves the arts in Belgrade.

Programmes, dates and opening hours change, so please check with Creative Belgrade: Europe’s untapped creative capital before you go.