‘’The sky above Belgrade is spacious and lofty, changeable but always beautiful, and that is true of the clear winter weather with its abundance of frost, and of the summer storms in which the whole sky swells into a single dark cloud, wind-driven and frenzied, that brings rain mixed with the dust of the great Pannonian plain; and it is so in the springtime, when it seems to burst into flowers just like the earth beneath it, and also in the autumn when it grows heavy with the swarming clusters of stars. It is always lovely and generous, as if to make up for all the things which this strange town cannot offer, and to give comfort for all the things that by right should not exist in it.
But the greatest glory of this dome above Belgrade is its sunsets. During the summer and autumn, they are as vast and incandescent as desert mirages, while in the winter they are muted in russet mists and somber clouds. And at all seasons of the year there often are days when the blaze of this sun, setting in the plain between the two rivers under Belgrade, glances away into the high bowl of the sky, to break there and scatter itself in a red shimmer over the whole far-flung town. At such moments, even the most godforsaken back alleys of Belgrade light up unexpectedly and the sun kindles even house windows which ordinarily lie fallow and colorless.’’
Written about Belgrade by: Ivo Andrić, Serbian Nobel Prize Laureate (1961)
Source I. Andrić. Woman from Sarajevo (translated by Joseph Hitrec). Published by A. Knoph, 1965.
Photo: "Pobednik monument, Kalemegdan, Belgrade" under CC3.0 licence; Author: Janos Guljas
Photos by Aleksandar Matić (TOB)
Photos by Aleksandar Matić (TOB)
