Niš is one of those cities where you can feel history on every corner, even if it doesn't always show off about it. Serbia's third-largest city and the undisputed capital of the south, it is also one of the oldest cities in Europe: here, in Roman Naissus, Constantine the Great was born around 272, the emperor who legalised Christianity and founded Constantinople. Thanks to its strategic position at the junction of the great roads linking central Europe with Greece and the East, Niš has been Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Serbian, and each era left its mark.
The result is a city of strong contrasts. A large Ottoman fortress with massive walls overlooks the Nišava River, and around it buzzes a pedestrian old town full of cafés, kafanas and student life. But Niš also holds darker memories: the chilling Skull Tower (Ćele Kula), built by the Turks with the skulls of Serbian fighters who fell in 1809; the Nazi concentration camp of Crveni Krst, one of the best preserved in Europe; and the Roman imperial villa of Mediana, a retreat for emperors.
This guide covers the essentials and the practicalities of Niš: how much tickets to the Skull Tower and Mediana cost, how to get there from Belgrade, what to see in the fortress, how to visit the memorial sites with the respect they deserve and where to enjoy the famous good life of Niš. A city of dense history, warm people, low prices and an energy that makes it unforgettable.
The history of Niš is very long and often dramatic. Founded by the Celts and Romanised as Naissus, it was an important centre of the Roman Empire and the birthplace of Emperor Constantine the Great (c. 272), who changed world history by legalising Christianity. A crossroads between East and West, the city passed through Byzantine, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Serbian hands before falling under Ottoman rule in the 15th century. Its great fortress dates from that Ottoman period. In 1809, during the First Serbian Uprising against the Turks, the Battle of Čegar ended with the heroic sacrifice of voivode Stevan Sinđelić, who blew up the powder magazine rather than surrender; in retaliation, the Ottomans built the Skull Tower (Ćele Kula) with the skulls of the fallen Serbs, a unique and terrible monument. Niš was freed from Ottoman rule in 1878. In the Second World War, under German occupation, the Crveni Krst concentration camp operated here, the scene in 1942 of one of the first mass escapes from a Nazi camp. The full story, with names and dates, is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Serbia's deep south and east: Constantine's ancient Naissus, the Roman and Ottoman frontier, dizzying canyons and the loudest trumpet festival in the Balkans.
Read the history of The south and east (Niš, Đerdap, Uvac) →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 7 activities in Sofía. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Have a look below: tap any of them to see them all.
They depart from Sofía, 129 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Niš is one of the oldest cities in Europe, and its story begins long before Rome. It was founded by the Celtic Scordisci, who called it Navissos and took advantage of a natural crossroads in the valley of the Nišava River. When the Romans conquered the region in the 1st century BC, they latinised the name to Naissus and turned the place into an important city: a hub of roads linking the heart of Europe with Constantinople, Greece and the East. The Via Militaris, the great imperial route through the Balkans, ran through Niš, and that strategic position would shape its whole destiny.
Roman Naissus reached its high point with a man born here around the year 272: Flavius Valerius Constantinus, known to history as Constantine the Great. The son of the soldier Constantius Chlorus, Constantine went on to become one of the most important emperors of all time. In 313, with the Edict of Milan, he ended the persecution of Christians and legalised their faith, changing the religious history of the West forever. He also founded a new capital on the Bosphorus, Constantinople, the future Istanbul, which would be the heart of the Byzantine world for a thousand years.
The people of Niš are very proud that a figure so decisive for European civilisation was born in their city. On the outskirts, the imperial villa of Mediana, with its mosaics and baths, recalls the luxury of the late Roman court and the city's ties to Constantine and his successors. For centuries Naissus was one of the great cities of the Empire in the Balkans, until invasions and changing times plunged it into darker days.
The same position that had made Naissus great turned it, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, into a place that was fought over and struck again and again. Attila's Huns razed the city in the 5th century, and the Byzantines rebuilt it, above all under Justinian. Over the following centuries it changed hands many times: Byzantines, Bulgarians and finally the medieval Serbs, who brought it into their rising state at the height of the Nemanjić dynasty.
As a frontier town and a place of transit, Niš saw armies, crusaders and merchants come and go. The Crusades passed through on their way to the Holy Land, and Serbs, Hungarians, Bulgarians and Byzantines fought battles here. Every power that held the city fortified it and used it as a base for controlling the southern Balkans. That role as a crossroads explains the many historical layers that lie beneath the ground in Niš.
The big change came with the Ottoman expansion. After the Battle of Kosovo (1389) and the gradual collapse of the Serbian state, Niš fell to the Turks for good in the 15th century and stayed in Ottoman hands, apart from a few short breaks, for more than four centuries. It became an important garrison town of the Empire, with its fortress, mosques, hammams and bazaars. The great citadel that overlooks the river today, built in the 18th century, is the most visible legacy of those long Ottoman centuries. But it was also under Turkish rule that the most terrible and famous episode in the history of Niš took place.
At the start of the 19th century, the Serbs rose against Ottoman rule in what is known as the First Serbian Uprising (1804-1813), the beginning of the long struggle for national independence. In 1809 the uprising reached the gates of Niš. On Čegar hill, near the city, a Serbian army led by the vojvoda Stevan Sinđelić faced Ottoman forces that far outnumbered them.
When the Serbian position was about to be overrun and the hand-to-hand fighting had grown desperate, Sinđelić made an extreme decision so as not to surrender or be taken prisoner: he fired into the powder magazine of his own trench, setting off a huge explosion that killed him, his men and many of the Ottoman attackers. It was an act of total sacrifice that became a legend of Serbian resistance.
The Ottoman revenge was gruesome. The Turkish commander of Niš ordered the heads of the fallen Serbs to be skinned and stuffed, and had a tower built from the skulls beside the road as a warning to future rebels: the Ćele Kula, the Skull Tower. Nearly a thousand skulls were set into it. But the warning backfired: over time the tower became a symbol of Serbian heroism and suffering. When the French poet Alphonse de Lamartine saw it in 1833, he was horrified and deeply moved, and the pages he wrote about it made it famous across Europe. After liberation, a chapel was built to protect the tower and honour the fallen. Today 58 skulls remain, and the monument is still one of the most harrowing memorial sites on the continent.
Niš was finally freed from Ottoman rule in 1878, when it became part of the Principality (later Kingdom) of Serbia. The city then went through a period of modernisation and growth: it became an important railway, industrial and military centre in the south of the country, and was even the temporary capital of Serbia during the First World War, when the government took refuge there before the occupation. In 1914 Niš saw the proclamation of the famous Declaration that set the union of all Serbs and South Slavs as a war aim.
The 20th century, however, brought a new period of horror. During the Second World War Nazi Germany occupied Serbia, and Niš was the scene of brutal repression. Next to the railway station stood the Crveni Krst ('Red Cross') concentration camp, through which some 30,000 prisoners passed: Serbs, Jews, Roma, communists and partisans. Many were tortured and then shot on nearby Bubanj hill, one of the main killing sites in occupied Serbia, where tens of thousands of people are thought to have been murdered.
The Crveni Krst camp went down in history for an act of courage: in February 1942 it saw one of the first mass breakouts from a Nazi concentration camp, when dozens of prisoners charged the barbed wire and the watchtowers. Many were gunned down, but some managed to escape and join the resistance. Today the camp, one of the best preserved in Europe, and the 'three fists' monument at Bubanj are memorial sites that remember the victims and honour that will to resist to the very end, in a city that already knew the price of freedom from the Skull Tower.
Today's Niš carries an incredibly dense history and at the same time is bursting with life. The third-largest city in Serbia and the undisputed capital of the south, it is a major university, industrial and service centre, with a young population that gives it energy and a well-earned reputation as a welcoming, laid-back city that loves good food and good music.
You feel that double nature, memory and enjoyment, as you walk around the city. The great Ottoman fortress, now a park, is the open-air living room of the people of Niš and home to the Nišville jazz festival, one of the most important in the Balkans, which fills the centuries-old walls with music every August. Kopitareva Street is lined with kafanas serving the famous roštilj of the south, the Serbian grill par excellence, along with beer, rakija and long, unhurried conversations after the meal. And on the outskirts, the Niška Banja spa offers the relaxation of its thermal waters, used since Roman times.
In Niš, then, Constantine's Naissus, the fortress and the skulls of the struggle against the Turks, the sites of Nazi terror and the everyday joy of a city that knows how to live all sit side by side. Exploring it is a journey through two thousand years of European history (Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Serbian, modern) while still feeling the pulse of a warm, affordable, present-day city. Niš shows that a place can carry the heaviest tragedies on its shoulders and, at the same time, offer travellers one of the most enjoyable and authentic stays in Serbia.
