Novi Sad

People lived on both banks here long before the city existed. Celts raised the first fortress on the right-bank rock, the Romans built Cusum on the Danube frontier, and medieval Hungary held Pétervárad, today's Petrovaradin. When the Habsburgs took the area from the Ottomans at the end of the 17th century, they barred Orthodox Christians from living in the fortress town, so in 1694 Serb merchants founded a new settlement on the opposite bank. First called the Serb city or Petrovaradinski Šanac, it gained the status of a free royal city on 1 February 1748 and with it the name Novi Sad, Újvidék or Neoplanta.

In the 18th and 19th centuries Novi Sad was the largest city inhabited by Serbs and the political and cultural centre of a people without a state of their own, earning the name Serbian Athens. In the revolution of 1848–49 the Hungarian garrison of the fortress bombarded and devastated it, and the city lost much of its population. In November 1918 an assembly in the city declared Vojvodina's union with Serbia. Annexed by Hungary in 1941, Novi Sad lost about 5,000 citizens in the war, including 1,246 killed by Hungarian police in the raid of January 1942, many of them Jews thrown into the Danube.

NATO bombing in 1999 destroyed all three of the city's Danube bridges. Afterwards Novi Sad grew fast, with migrants from across the former Yugoslavia, and it was European Youth Capital in 2019 and a European Capital of Culture in 2022. On 1 November 2024 the canopy of the main railway station collapsed, killing sixteen people, and set off protests across Serbia.

The Serbian Athens has kept its institutions: Matica srpska, the oldest cultural and scientific institution in Serbia, moved here from Budapest in 1864 and holds the country's second-largest library, and the Serbian National Theatre, founded in 1861, is one of the oldest professional theatres among the South Slavs. It hosts Sterijino pozorje, the country's leading theatre festival. Novi Sad became a UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts in 2023, and the European Capital of Culture year turned an old industrial zone in Liman into the Distrikt artists' quarter.

For a quarter of a century the city was known abroad for EXIT, the summer music festival that grew out of the 2000 student movement and moved to the Petrovaradin Fortress in 2001. Its organisers ended it in Serbia after the 2025 edition, citing political pressure after the festival backed the student protests.

The city is mixed in faith and language. Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches and a former synagogue stand within a few streets of each other, and Hungarian, Slovak and other communities live in the city and its suburbs. People here are proud of a calmer, slower manner than the capital's, and the first sunny day of spring brings everyone out to the café terraces of Zmaj Jovina Street.

The 2022 census counted about 260,000 people in the city proper and about 372,000 in its administrative area, which takes in Petrovaradin, Sremska Kamenica and suburbs on both banks. More than half of the residents were born elsewhere, many of them Serbs from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro. Novi Sad is the economic centre of Vojvodina; after the collapse of its old industrial combines in the 1990s its economy shifted to services, and the university, IT firms and a free economic zone now set its pace. In 2025 it was the largest construction site in Serbia.

Most people live in flats in Liman, Detelinara, Bistrica and the newer districts that spread over former fields, or in houses in the suburbs. Buses carry the city, and summer life moves to the Danube: the Štrand and other river beaches, Lake Ledinci in the Fruška Gora, and evenings on the quay.

Since November 2024 the station collapse has dominated civic life. Students and residents have held repeated large protests and blockades, and the question of responsibility for the deaths remains a divisive issue in the city.

Typical Serbian food fills Novi Sad's tables — ćevapi, burek, kajmak, kiseli kupus, sour cabbage, and pasulj, bean stew — alongside fish dishes, local cheeses and charcuterie. The city's own contribution is the Index sandwich, named after university students' index books and a popular street food since the 1980s.

The Vojvodina kitchen shows its Central European roots: rinflajš, boiled beef with vegetables and sauces, nasuvo s krompirom, homemade pasta with potatoes, gulaš and paprikaš. Riblji paprikaš, a spicy fish stew, is served along the river, and Ribarsko ostrvo, Fisherman's Island, has a row of riverside restaurants. On the plain outside town, salaši, old farmsteads, serve country cooking.

Desserts often feature raspberries, one of the region's largest exports, and Dunavska Street is lined with ice-cream parlours. The open-air Riblja pijaca and Futoška pijaca markets sell fresh produce from the surrounding farms, and wine comes from the Fruška Gora wineries across the river.