If Belgrade is intense and Balkan, Novi Sad is its calm, Central European counterpoint. Serbia's second city and the capital of the province of Vojvodina spreads out flat and orderly along the Danube, with a Viennese-style main square, pedestrian streets full of cafés, pastel façades from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, crowning it all from the opposite bank, the imposing Petrovaradin fortress, the 'Gibraltar of the Danube'. It's a city for strolling at your own pace, sitting on a terrace and letting its easy-going rhythm carry you along.
Novi Sad was born in the 17th century as the Serbian civilian town that grew up at the foot of the Habsburg fortress, and it has always been a crossroads of peoples and faiths: Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks, Germans, Jews and other communities lived side by side here, leaving behind Orthodox and Catholic churches, a great synagogue and a mixed culture that earned it the nickname 'the Serbian Athens' for its role in the 19th-century cultural revival. In 2022 it was European Capital of Culture, the first outside the European Union. And for a quarter of a century it was famous all over Europe for the EXIT festival, which every July filled the tunnels and bastions of Petrovaradin with music (its last edition at the fortress was in 2025).
This guide covers the essentials of Novi Sad with a practical, warm eye: how to plan your visit between Liberty Square, the old town and the fortress; how to cross to Petrovaradin and climb to its clock tower; where to eat and have a drink; and how to get out to the Danube, the Štrand beach, the baroque town of Sremski Karlovci and the monasteries and vineyards of Fruška Gora. Novi Sad is a perfect one- or two-day trip from Belgrade, and one of the most enjoyable cities in Serbia.
The history of Novi Sad is bound up with that of its fortress. On the right bank of the Danube, on a strategic rock, there were settlements from ancient times, but it was the Austro-Hungarian Empire that, after taking the region from the Ottomans at the end of the 17th century, built the colossal Petrovaradin fortress there (mostly between 1692 and the mid-18th century) to halt any Turkish advance. On the other side of the river, the Serbian, Prussian and other populations who could not live inside the military citadel gradually grew into a civilian settlement that in 1748 was granted the status of royal free city by Empress Maria Theresa, under the name Novi Sad ('New Garden', Neoplanta in Latin, Neusatz in German, Újvidék in Hungarian). During the 19th century, Novi Sad became the great cultural, political and religious centre of the Serbs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so much so that it was called 'the Serbian Athens'. It suffered devastating destruction during the Revolution of 1848-1849, when it was bombarded from the fortress itself. In the 20th century it became part of Yugoslavia; it endured Hungarian occupation and the tragic 1942 'raid' during the Second World War, and the 1999 NATO bombing, which destroyed its bridges over the Danube. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The northern plain, a mosaic of peoples and languages shaped by its old Austro-Hungarian heritage: Serbia's slice of Mitteleuropa, with Novi Sad, the Art Nouveau gem of Subotica and the vineyards of Fruška Gora.
Read the history of Vojvodina (north: Novi Sad, Subotica) →If you book from here we earn a commission and you pay no more. Prices and availability come from Civitatis.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The story of Novi Sad doesn't begin in the city itself but on the rock across the river. On the right bank of the Danube rises a rocky outcrop that has drawn soldiers and builders for thousands of years, because whoever holds it controls the crossing of the great river at a key point on the Pannonian Plain. It was home to prehistoric settlements, a Roman fort linked to the Danube limes and, in the Middle Ages, Hungarian fortifications and a Cistercian abbey, from which the place took much of its name.
In 1526, after the Hungarian defeat at the Battle of Mohács, the whole region fell to the Ottoman Empire, which ruled it for a century and a half. The Rock of Petrovaradin sat on the shifting border between the Ottoman and Habsburg worlds and saw war again and again. The big turning point came at the end of the 17th century: after the failed second Ottoman siege of Vienna (1683), the Austrian armies went on the offensive and pushed the Turks south. In 1691 the Battle of Slankamen was fought nearby, and in 1716 came the great Battle of Petrovaradin, in which Prince Eugene of Savoy defeated a far larger Ottoman army right at the foot of the fortress.
To hold on to their conquest, the Habsburgs built a colossal fortress on the rock, the Petrovaradinska tvrđava. Most of it went up between 1692 and the mid-18th century, following the bastion fortification principles of the day (the Vauban style). With its tiered walls, its bastions and an astonishing network of underground galleries stretching for kilometres, it earned the nickname 'Gibraltar of the Danube'. This military giant would be the protective shadow under which the city of Novi Sad was born on the other side of the river.
Under the protection of the fortress, a civilian settlement began to grow from the 1690s on the flat left bank of the Danube. Only soldiers and authorised staff were allowed to live inside the military citadel, so the Orthodox Serb population settled across the river. They were joined by Hungarians, Germans, Greeks, Armenians, Jews and other communities drawn by trade and by the services the garrison needed. The settlement, first known by names such as 'the Racian trench' (Racians being the Serbs), prospered thanks to river trade and its craftsmen.
The Serb community, wealthy and growing, wanted to be free of military rule and to govern itself as a free town. After raising a considerable sum of money to pay for the privilege, it got its wish: on 1 February 1748, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria granted the settlement the status of a free royal city, with the right to self-government. The new city was given the Latin name Neoplanta, which in the languages of its inhabitants became Novi Sad ('New Garden') in Serbian, Neusatz in German and Újvidék in Hungarian.
That founding act shaped the city's character for good: a commercial, diverse, middle-class city built by many peoples and faiths living side by side. Over the 18th century, Novi Sad filled up with Orthodox and Catholic churches, synagogues, schools and grand townhouses, and became the largest Serb population centre in the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire, a place where Serbian culture and language could flourish under the shelter of the Habsburg monarchy.
The 19th century was Novi Sad's golden age. The city became the cultural, political and spiritual heart of the Serbs living within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that is, north of the border with Ottoman (and later autonomous) Serbia. Serbian-language newspapers, publishers, schools, theatres and cultural societies thrived here; poets and thinkers wrote and published here; and in 1864 the Matica srpska moved here from Budapest. Founded in 1826, it is the oldest and most important Serbian cultural and scholarly institution. For all these reasons, Novi Sad earned the nickname 'Serbian Athens' (Srpska Atina).
That cultural brilliance went hand in hand with political turmoil. During the European revolution of 1848-1849, the Serbs of Vojvodina rose up to demand autonomy from the Hungarian authorities, amid a complex civil war. Novi Sad paid a terrible price: in June 1849, during the fighting, the city was shelled from Petrovaradin Fortress itself, then in Hungarian hands, and much of it was destroyed and burned. Thousands of residents fled and the population collapsed. The city had to be rebuilt almost from scratch over the following decades, and much of its elegant centre today dates from exactly that rebuilding in the second half of the 19th century.
Despite the disaster, Novi Sad recovered and remained the cultural beacon of the empire's Serbs until the end of the First World War. Figures such as the poet Jovan Jovanović Zmaj and the politician Svetozar Miletić, whose statues still stand at the heart of the city, embody that era of national and cultural fervour.
With the end of the First World War and the break-up of Austria-Hungary, Novi Sad and all of Vojvodina joined the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918, later renamed Yugoslavia. Until then a frontier city of the Danubian empire, Novi Sad became part of a South Slav state and kept growing as the regional centre of the fertile Vojvodina plain, the country's breadbasket.
The Second World War brought the darkest chapter in its history. In 1941, after the Axis invasion, Vojvodina was carved up and the Novi Sad area came under the occupation of Hungary, Germany's ally. In January 1942, Hungarian occupation forces carried out the so-called 'raid' (Novosadska racija): over several days of terror in the depths of winter, they murdered thousands of Serb, Jewish and Roma civilians, many of whom were thrown under the ice of the Danube. It is one of the most remembered massacres in the city's history and is commemorated today by a memorial on the riverbank. Later, in 1944, the remaining Jewish community was deported to the Nazi death camps, and the city was liberated by the Yugoslav Partisans at the end of that year.
After the war, Novi Sad became the capital of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina within Tito's socialist Yugoslavia and went through decades of industrialisation and growth. The city spread out with new neighbourhoods and established itself as Serbia's second city, while keeping its multicultural character and relaxed atmosphere.
The end of the 20th century hit Novi Sad hard once again. During the break-up of Yugoslavia and the wars that came with it (a complex and painful process mentioned here only in broad terms), the city was spared fighting on its own soil but suffered the effects of isolation and crisis. In spring 1999, during NATO's bombing campaign against Serbia in the context of the Kosovo War, allied aircraft destroyed all three of Novi Sad's bridges over the Danube, splitting the city in two and cutting river traffic for years. Rebuilding the bridges took much of the following decade.
Once that period was over, Novi Sad made a remarkable recovery. In 2000, in the final days of the Milošević regime, a group of students held the first edition of EXIT in the city. The festival was born in a spirit of protest (an 'exit' from that era) and over the years grew into one of Europe's great music festivals. It was held every summer at Petrovaradin Fortress and drove the city's tourism for a quarter of a century, until its last edition at the citadel in 2025.
The biggest recognition came in 2022, when Novi Sad was European Capital of Culture, the first city outside the European Union to hold the title. The programme drove the restoration of spaces, the creation of new cultural centres (such as the revitalised Chinese Quarter and Almaš neighbourhood) and a packed calendar of art and music. Today Novi Sad greets travellers as a friendly, cultured and multicultural city, proud of its fortress, its Viennese-style square and a past that sums up, on a small scale, all the Central European and Balkan complexity of Serbia.
