Belgrade (Serbo-Croatian Beograd), (population 1.2 million, 1.6 including the suburbs) is the capital of Serbia (since 1817) and Yugoslavia (since 1918). The city lies on the outfall of the Sava river to the Danube river in northern Serbia.
Originally (from the 3rd century BC) the Celtic and later Roman settlement of Singidunum, the site passed to the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, experienced occupation by successive invaders of the region - Huns, Sarmatians, Ostrogoths and Avars - before the arrival of the Serbs around 630 AD. Next recorded in 878 as Beligrad ("white fortress") under the rule of the Bulgarian kingdom, it passed again under Byzantine and Bulgarian rule before emerging as a city of the medieval Serbian kingdom.
Subsequently occupied by Hungary and in 1521 captured by the Ottoman Turks, Belgrade remained under Ottoman rule for nearly three centuries. Thrice occupied by Austria (1688-1690 and 1717-1739, 1789-1791), the city was briefly held (1806-1813) by Serbian forces during the first national uprising against Ottoman rule, and in 1817 became the capital of an autonomous principality of Serbia.
With the departure of its Turkish garrison (1867) and Serbia's full independence (1878) and elevation to a kingdom (1882), Belgrade became a key Balkan city. But despite the opening of a railway to Niš, Serbia's second city, conditions in Serbia as a whole remained those of an overwhelmingly agrarian country, and in 1900 the capital contained only 69,000 inhabitants.
After occupation by Austro-Hungarian and German troops in 1915-1918 during World War I, Belgrade experienced faster growth and significant modernisation as the capital of the new kingdom of Yugolsavia during the 1920s and 1930s, growing in population to 239,000 by 1931 with the incorporation of the northern suburb of Zemun, formerly on the Hungarian bank of the river.
Despite damage in World War II through German bombing (April 1941} and subsequent occupation (April 1941-October 1944), Belgrade grew rapidly as the capital of Communist-ruled Yugoslavia, developing as a major industrial centre. NATO bombing during the Kosovo War in 1999 caused further damage, notably to the Danube bridges, leaving reconstruction needs which remain to this day.