Short answers, pulled from the story.
Belgrade has been battled over in 115 wars and razed 44 times. It has also been bombed five times and besieged on numerous occasions, making it one of the most fought-over cities in European history.
The noon bell tradition traces to Belgrade's defense in 1456, when a Christian army led by Hungarian general John Hunyadi successfully repelled an Ottoman siege of more than 100,000 soldiers. Pope Callixtus III ordered noon bells rung throughout the Christian world to commemorate the victory, and the practice continues today.
The Vinča culture flourished in the Belgrade area between around 5500 and 4500 BC. It produced some of the largest settlements in prehistoric Europe and is credited with the earliest known copper metallurgy in Europe, as well as a proto-writing system called the Old European script that dates to around 5300 BC, predating Sumerian and Minoan writing.
Belgrade fell to Suleiman the Magnificent on the 28th of August, 1521, after a force of 250,000 soldiers and more than 100 ships attacked the fortress. The city was largely razed and its entire Orthodox Christian population was deported to Istanbul, to an area that became known as the Belgrade forest.
During the German occupation beginning in April 1941, General Franz Böhme ordered that 100 Serbs or Jews be shot for every German soldier killed by guerrillas. Members of the Jewish community were subject to mass shootings, and Belgrade became the first city in Nazi-occupied Europe to be declared judenfrei. Resistance was led by Major Žarko Todorović until his arrest in 1943.
The Belgrade Waterfront is an urban renewal project initiated in 2014 by the Serbian government and its Emirati partner Eagle Hills Properties. By May 2025, more than 4 billion euros had been invested, over 900 companies had opened within the development, and more than 10,000 apartments had been sold. The total planned investment aims to exceed 12 billion euros.