Niš

Niš was the Roman Naissus, a garrison and market town on the military road from the Danube to Constantinople. Constantine the Great was born here in 272 and lived in the city from 316 to 322, enlarging it with public buildings; in 364, at the imperial villa of Mediana, the emperors Valentinian and Valens met and divided the Roman Empire between them. The Huns sacked the city in the 440s, and Justinian restored it before it was destroyed by the Avars.

Byzantium, Bulgaria and Serbia fought over Niš through the Middle Ages. By 1188 it was the capital of the Serbian ruler Stefan Nemanja, who received Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and his crusaders here in 1189. The Ottomans took it after a 25-day siege in 1385, and apart from Serbian and Austrian interludes held it until 1878, rebuilding the fortress in 1719–23. In 1809 Serbian rebels were defeated at nearby Čegar, and the Ottoman commander built their skulls into a tower as a warning. The Serbian army entered the city on 11 January 1878; many of its Muslim inhabitants were forced to flee, and most of its mosques were pulled down.

The railway from Belgrade arrived in 1884, and for a few years Niš was the end of the line of the Orient Express. In the First World War it was Serbia's wartime capital until late 1915. During the Second World War the Germans ran the Crveni Krst camp here, and more than 10,000 people were shot on Bubanj hill. The University of Niš was founded in 1965, and NATO air strikes in 1999 killed 56 people in the city.

Niš is the cultural centre of south-eastern Serbia. Its best-known event is Nišville, an international jazz festival held over four days each August on the summer stage of the fortress, and the city also hosts a long-running festival of film acting, a classical music festival in autumn and a biennial choral festival. The National Theatre began in 1889 as the Sinđelić Theatre, the poet Branko Miljković is the city's leading literary figure, and the rock bands Galija and Kerber came from here. In 1905 the painter Nadežda Petrović founded an artists' colony in nearby Sićevo, and a literary colony has met there each year since 1991.

The city is proud of its Roman past, which it remembers through Constantine: in 2013 Niš celebrated 1,700 years since his Edict of Milan with a new memorial in the centre, and the airport bears his name. Orthodox Christianity shapes the calendar, with family slava feasts and church holidays.

Football is followed through Radnički Niš, whose home is the Čair Stadium, and evenings are spent in the cafés of Tinkers Alley and around the fortress.

According to the final results of the 2022 census, about 183,000 people live in the city proper and about 260,000 in the wider city area, which is divided into five municipalities. The University of Niš has about 22,000 students, and the city has more high-rise buildings than any in Serbia except Belgrade.

Niš was an industrial city in Yugoslav times, known for electronics, mechanical engineering, tobacco and textiles, and in 1981 its income per head was above the Yugoslav average. Several big firms went bankrupt in the 1990s and 2000s; the tobacco factory was sold to Philip Morris in 2003, and since then foreign manufacturers have opened plants, helped by a free economic zone. A large new building for the Clinical Centre opened in 2017.

The green market behind the fortress, where hundreds of smallholders sell fruit and vegetables, the shopping centres of Milana Obrenovića Street and the underground shopping passage are busy, and since July 2025 city buses have been free for everyone.

Grilled meat is a southern Serbian tradition best known from nearby Leskovac, and pljeskavica is everywhere in Niš. Pljeskavica, a spiced patty of minced pork, beef and lamb and one of Serbia's national dishes, is served on a plate or in a lepinja flatbread with onions, kajmak and sometimes ajvar. Ćevapčići, small fingers of spiced minced beef, pork and lamb, are served the same way, and the fast-food tradition of grilled meat goes back to the Ottoman towns of the Balkans, among them Niš.

Burek is a common breakfast: thin flaky pastry, usually filled with cheese or minced meat, eaten with yogurt. The round form of burek was developed in Niš, and Niš is said to produce the best burek. Urnebes, whose name means "mess", is a spread of white cheese, kajmak and hot chilli peppers that is especially associated with Niš and the south, and shopska salad, chopped tomato, cucumber and onion topped with white cheese, is a simple staple.

The green market sells local fruit and vegetables, and the cafés of Tinkers Alley and the fortress fill from morning to night. Rakija, usually of plums or apricots, is the local spirit, and the city's tap water is drinkable — something residents are proud of.