Short answers, pulled from the story.
Novi Sad was founded in 1694 by Serb merchants who formed a colony on the left bank of the Danube. They were barred by Habsburg authorities from living in the nearby Petrovaradin Fortress town, so they established their own settlement, initially called Petrovaradinski Šanac.
Novi Sad earned the nickname Serbian Athens because it served as the cultural and political center for Serbs during the 18th and 19th centuries, when Serbs had no national state of their own. Writers including Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, Đura Jakšić, and Jovan Jovanović Zmaj lived or worked there, and institutions such as Matica srpska and the Serbian National Theatre were founded in the city.
During three days of raids from the 21st to the 23rd of January 1942, Hungarian police killed 1,246 citizens, among them more than 800 Jews, and threw their bodies into the Danube. The total death toll of the entire raid reached around 2,500.
The 1999 NATO bombardment during the Kosovo War destroyed all three of Novi Sad's Danube bridges: the Žeželj Bridge, the Varadin Bridge, and the Liberty Bridge. The city was also left without communications, water, and electricity, and the daily bombing of its oil refinery caused severe pollution and widespread ecological damage.
Novi Sad was the European Youth Capital in 2019, a European Capital of Culture in 2022 (originally selected for 2021 but moved due to the COVID-19 pandemic), and became a UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts in 2023.
EXIT is one of the largest summer music festivals in Europe, held in Novi Sad since 2000. In 2017, over 200,000 visitors from 60 countries attended approximately 35 concerts during the annual event.
On the 1st of November 2024, the canopy of the main railway station in Novi Sad collapsed, killing sixteen people. The incident sparked a series of mass protests against government corruption that continued into 2025.