Stari Grad, Belgrade


Stari Grad is a municipality of the city of Belgrade. It encompasses some of the oldest sections of urban Belgrade, thus the name. Stari Grad is one of the three municipalities that occupy the very center of Belgrade, together with Savski Venac and Vračar.

History

Despite some of the oldest sections of Belgrade belong to Stari Grad, the municipality itself is among the latest urban ones formed administratively. It was formed by the merger of the municipality of Skadarlija and part of the municipality of Terazije on January 1, 1957.

Geography

Stari Grad occupies the ending ridge of Šumadija geological bar. The cliff-like ridge, where the fortress of Kalemegdan is located, overlooks the Great War Island and the confluence of the Sava river into the Danube, and makes one of the most beautiful natural lookouts in Belgrade. With Novi Beograd, it is one of 2 municipalities of Belgrade which occupy the banks of both major rivers in Belgrade, the Sava and the Danube.
The municipality of Stari Grad covers an area of just and borders the municipalities of Paliula on the east, Vračar on the south-east and Savski Venac on the south. The Sava makes a border to the municipality of Novi Beograd and the Danube to the municipalities of Zemun and the Banat's section of Palilula.
The riverside of the Danube has two distinct artificial bays, the small marina and the Port of Belgrade.

Neighborhood

The neighborhood of Stari Grad is not generally considered by the Belgraders as one single definitive neighborhood. Area which Stari Grad covers is either simply styled "downtown" or by the names of the more established neighborhood which it overlaps: Two parts of Dorćol separated on social-difference and architecture basis, It spreads from the bank of Danube by the Kalemegdan fortress to the Republic Square also known as "The Horse". Downtown Belgrade is most populated area which makes it the heart of the city, it spreads from Terazije down to Despot Stefan Boulevard. Tasmajdan neighborhood is along with Šipka the on the east side of Stari grad next to municipality of Palilula.
This is a list of the neighborhoods in the municipality:
Like the other two "old" municipalities of central Belgrade, Stari Grad for decades is a highly depopulating municipality, but being a central municipality and small in area, it remains one of the most densely populated municipalities in Serbia. There were 48,450 inhabitants according to the 2011 census or, compared to a population of 96,517 with a density of back in 1971.
Even though residential areas are much densely compact compared to Vračar, the latter is densely populated because almost one third of Stari Grad, even though it is "heart" of Belgrade is not inhabited. However, a number of people working on the territory of the municipality doubles its own population and makes possible for the municipality of Stari Grad to achieve GDP per capita 6 to 8 times higher than the average in Serbia.

Ethnic structure

The ethnic composition of the municipality:
Ethnic groupPopulation
Serbs43,208
Yugoslavs613
Montenegrins441
Croats268
Macedonians203
Gorani156
Romani116
Muslims97
Slovenians84
Russians68
Albanians63
Hungarians53
Bosniaks40
Romanians35
Slovaks34
Germans31
Bulgarians28
Others2,912
Total48,450

Administration

Recent presidents of the municipality:
The following table gives a preview of total number of registered people employed in legal entities per their core activity :
ActivityTotal
Agriculture, forestry and fishing60
Mining and quarrying32
Manufacturing3,192
Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply753
Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities252
Construction1,592
Wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles7,643
Transportation and storage2,704
Accommodation and food services4,719
Information and communication6,875
Financial and insurance activities3,735
Real estate activities457
Professional, scientific and technical activities7,731
Administrative and support service activities6,201
Public administration and defense; compulsory social security3,514
Education5,269
Human health and social work activities2,136
Arts, entertainment and recreation3,074
Other service activities2,397
Individual agricultural workers9
Total62,346

Features

Administration

As a curiosity, Stari Grad is the location of two shortest streets of Belgrade, Marka Leka and Laze Pačua, which are 45 and 48 meters long, respectively. Despite being in the sole downtown and densely populated urban section, they have no numbers as all the buildings located in them are )numbered from the neighboring streets.

Education

Stari Grad was founded in 1948 as the Polyclinic of the First Raion. It was located at the corner of the Gospodar Jevremova and Kapetan Mišina streets, in the building of the Belgrade Shipping Society. It moved into the large, new building in the Simina Street in 1964. In 2018, it was estimated that municipality has 47,000 inhabitants, but the health center had 82,000 registered patients.

Dva Bela Goluba

Up to the 1860s, this area was uninhabited. Jovan Kujundžić, a tailor had a ground floor house at the modern crossroad of the Makedonska, Svetogorska, Hilandarska and Cetinjska streets. He switched to the catering business and founded a kafana Dva bela goluba. Originally, it was a typical road meyhane. The kafana became so famous, that the entire neighborhood and the modern Svetogorska Street, were named after it in 1872. By the end of the 19th century, the neighborhood gradually developed along the central street and became fully urbanized, as a direct, eastern extension of the city's downtown.
In the late 1920s, the Artisan Guild purchased the house and the surrounding lot in order to build the Home of the Artisans, which is today the building of the Radio Belgrade. Kujundžić had one condition, that the name is to be preserved. Because of that, above the entrance into the building, the sculptural composition was carved. It shows two persons with an anvil, next to the anvil are scissors, with two white doves. The kafana was moved to the Bohemian quarter of Skadarlija and the name for the neighborhood fell into oblivion.
The neighborhood remains a location of several important buildings which were declared a cultural monuments and protected by law:

Twin towns — Sister cities

Stari Grad is twinned with: