permanent exhibition
Belgrade Through the Centuries
/XVI - XX century/

Opening date:18th April 2003
Author: Branka Prpa, PhD
Realization of the permanent exhibition: the employees of the Historical Archives of Belgrade
Visualization: engineer architect Bojana Đurović
Graphic design: Dragana Lacmanović
Exhibition opened by: Nenad Bogdanović MA, he president of the Executive Council of the Assembly of the City of Belgrade in the presence of a large number of invited guests from the political, social and cultural milieu of the city

The objective of the permanent exhibition of the Historical Archives of Belgrade was to show the history of the city where the interests of the great powers and different cultures have intertwined, and its history as a swarm of political ferment and dramatic events, invisibly linked into an organic whole with deep roots and long life. The most valuable and the most attractive documents have been systematized into problematic, thematic and chronological entries.
The history of Belgrade has been divided into nine wholes. The oldest document A dialogue between an Ottoman Turk and a Christian dates back to the 16th century and marks the beginning of the first part – Between the crescent and the cross.
Every chapter, until the last one – Between the sickle and the hammer, offers the visitor an opportunity to familiarize himself with the four centuries of the history of Belgrade, while the principle of the labyrinth of time of the exhibition gives him a possibility to search for himself the complex history.
The exhibition has an accompanying catalogue in Serbian and English. The stylized cross and crescent speak symbolically of the meeting of different civilizations in this area that has helped the city to build an identity of its own.
The exhibition ends in an Epilogue in the shape of a giant question mark which, symbolically, tells the visitors that the Archives has no documents of the last decade of the 20th century. The emptiness is filled by a documentary produced by VIN on the events in Belgrade of the time.