Novi Sad

Serbia’s second city is on the Danube, upriver from Belgrade and downriver from Budapest, which exerted a historical influence on this place. By Serbian standards Novi Sad is rather young, and took off in the 18th century as a trading hub opposite the mammoth Petrovaradin Fortress, an Austro-Hungarian outpost. In the 1700s and 1800s the city blossomed into an unofficial capital for Serbian culture.This was briefly interrupted by the 1848 Revolution when the Hungarian garrison in the Petrovaradin Fortress smashed the city to pieces.

Everything you see is from the immediate reconstruction, but none of Novi Sad’s lustre was lost. The city’s love of art and music lives on at the EXIT Festival, one of Europe’s biggest summer music events.