Unorthodox Socialism
Private tour of Belgrade brutalism and socialism in architecture
2.5 hours – EUR 65
Have close ups of five key buildings of Socialist Yugoslavian capital New Belgrade
Put architecture in context: modernism, brutalism, city planning, Cold War, rise and fall of Yugoslavia
Get why this architecture stood out at MoMa New York and Venice Biennale
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See Five Iconic Socialist and Brutalist Buildings in Belgrade
This dynamic tour across New Belgrade, once the capital of socialist and brutalist architecture of Yugoslavia, takes a close look at five exemplary buildings. You’ll see a museum, government, business tower, housing block and convention hall. In 2 hours of our Belgrade brutalist architecture tour, you’ll understand 50 years of a society that some saw as utopia and some as a dictatorship.
Why Take an Architecture Tour of New Belgrade
In recent years, architecture and city planning in socialist Yugoslavia in the years 1948-1980, created a hype at MoMA New York and the Venice Biennale of Architecture. On this tour, you’ll hear how it was to live it, as your art historian guide spent her school years living in the socialist housing block in New Belgrade.
What to Expect From the Socialist and Brutalist Architecture Tour of New Belgrade
Brace yourself for discoveries. After the tour, you won’t think the same way about Yugoslav brutalism, socialism or social housing. What you assumed was just another Soviet style mass of blocks will surprise you.
On your private Belgrade architecture tour, you’ll see the buildings for the socialist elites, buildings for socialist business, buildings to impress the heads of Non-Aligned states and social housing blocks for the declaratively classless society.
From its birth in 1948 until 1980, New Belgrade grew from 0 to 200,000. The tour will show you how architecture and urban planning played a role in this socialist success story.
Communists, Modernists, and Non-Aligned
You’ll meet the guide in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art at Ušće. You’ll explore its modernist 1960s volumes and find out why its precious marble facades contradict the stereotypes of socialist architecture.
On our way to the Government building, we walk through the Park of Friendship, where the heads of 120 Non-Aligned countries planted trees as symbols of peace when the Movement was inaugurated in Belgrade in 1961.
Soviets, Americans and Brutalists
We’ll take a look at the Yugoslav Government Building from the outside. The building is a monument of an earlier phase of YU politics, around 1948, when Yugoslavia strayed from the alignment with the USSR. So the architecture turned away from Soviet models right in the middle of construction!
Our next stop is the Genex Tower, aka Western City Gate, a 30-floor structure that won the hearts of many visitors to Belgrade. Built in 1977 by a Yugoslav state-owned global business, it was the first smart building in the Balkans, acclaimed as a brutalist masterpiece.
Besides being a brutalist icon, Genex Tower tells us suprising stories of Yugoslav communism.
Idealistic Brutalist Housing Block In New Belgrade
From the controversies and merits of Yugoslavia brutalist architecture & business, we move to the controversies and merits of Yugoslav housing and living. Inside the Block no.23, you’ll discover the concept that was not a ghetto, but included public schools and kindergartens, sports courts and art studios, greenery and a mini shopping mall.
You’ll hear the guide’s personal stories of life in the blocks in their golden decades of the 60s, 70s and 80s, and the stories of living not so well in the 90s.
Records, Awards and End of Party
Our final stop is a gigantic congress center, built in 1977, beating all the records with its speed of construction. The first convention hall in this part of Europe, nominated for the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Sava Center was the final stop for Yugoslavia as well, as the Communist Party cracked in this building, on its last congress in 1990.
Practical Info
Meeting point
In front of the main entrance to Museum of Contemporary Art
End point
Physical activity
easy walking and car
Payment
Cash at the start of the tour
Start times
9am – 3pm
Let’s Go!
Ready to hit the right places at right times?