Three days in Novi Sad: a fortress nobody took, and the wine villages behind it

Two nights in the capital of Vojvodina: a Habsburg square, a Danube beach, sixteen kilometres of tunnels under a fortress that was never captured, and a monastery hill of vineyards half an hour away.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Novi Sad
Places
7 across 3 days
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Novi Sad is what happens when Serbs, Hungarians, Germans, Slovaks and Ruthenians all end up in the same fertile plain under the same emperor. The result is a low, orderly, green city of pastel facades and wide pavements that feels more like southern Hungary than like Belgrade, an hour down the river, and is a great deal more relaxed than either.

The reason it exists is on the other bank. Petrovaradin was built by the Habsburgs after they pushed the Ottomans back down the Danube, and it is enormous: a star fort on a rock with four levels of tunnels under it, a clock tower whose hands are the wrong way round, and, since 2000, a music festival in its ditches that draws close to two hundred thousand people every July.

Two nights is right for the city and the fortress, with a morning left over for the hill behind it. Fruska Gora is a low wooded ridge covered in vineyards and Orthodox monasteries, and the small town at the foot of it makes a sweet red wine that the Austrian court used to order by the barrel.

Highlights

  • Petrovaradin fortress at sunset, and the underground galleries beneath it
  • The clock tower with its hands swapped, so boatmen on the Danube could read the hour from a distance
  • A Gothic Revival church with a tiled roof on a main square that looks entirely Hungarian
  • The fish market on a weekend morning, which is where the province actually shops
  • Sremski Karlovci, a baroque town of wine cellars and a treaty that redrew Europe in 1699

Where to stay

Novi Sad, two nights

The plan of the city is easy: a main square with the town hall and the big church on it, a pedestrian street running east from it, the Danube a few minutes south, and the fortress on the bluff across the water. Everything below except the wine town is within half an hour on foot.

Stay in the centre, or in the streets just behind the main square. Prices are well under Belgrade's, rooms are large, and the only week that is difficult is the festival.

Novi Sad was the intellectual capital of the Serbs while they were still Habsburg subjects, which is why a city of this size has a matica, a national library and a serious theatre. It was also the site of one of the worst three days of the Second World War in this region, in January 1942, and there is a monument on the quay to the people shot on the frozen river.

Day by day

Day 1 in Novi Sad

The main square, two churches and the long pedestrian street

Start on the main square, which is a straightforward piece of Austro-Hungarian town planning: a neo-Renaissance town hall on one side, a big church on the other, and cafe tables filling the space between them from about ten in the morning.

The church is Catholic, built in the 1890s in Gothic Revival with a roof of coloured glazed tiles from the Zsolnay works in Hungary, and it is the tallest thing in the province. Locals call it the cathedral even though it is not one, which annoys precisely nobody.

The town hall opposite went up in the same decade and is the same architect's work, and the statue between them is of the lawyer and mayor who led Serb politics under the Habsburgs and was locked up for it. One local reading of the pose is that he is squaring up to the Hungarian authorities across the square.

Then walk east into the pedestrian streets and find the Orthodox cathedral, which is the seat of the local bishop and much plainer outside than in: a wall of icons, a lot of gilt, and a doorkeeper who will let you look if you are quiet.

Eat somewhere with paprika on the menu, and end the evening on Laze Teleckog, one narrow street that contains most of the bars in the city.

  1. 15:00

    Name of Mary Church

    Religious

    The big Catholic church on the main square, all pointed arches and patterned glazed tiles, finished in 1894. The tallest church in the region, and everybody here calls it the cathedral.

  2. 15:50

    Town Hall

    Visit

    The neo-Renaissance town hall facing the church across the square, with the statue of the nineteenth century mayor in front of it. The default meeting point in the city.

  3. 16:30

    Church of the Great Martyr St. George

    Religious

    The Serbian Orthodox cathedral just off the pedestrian street, seat of the local eparchy, with an iconostasis worth stepping inside for. Quiet, free, and a five minute visit.

  4. 19:30

    Dinner, then Laze Teleckog

    Eat

    Paprika, sausage and river fish somewhere near the square, then one short street that holds most of the city's bars in a row.

With more time: The synagogue two streets south, finished in 1909 by the architect who built most of the great Hungarian synagogues, is no longer a working congregation but is used as a concert hall, and the acoustics are the reason to check what is on. Novi Sad had several thousand Jews before 1941 and has a few hundred now.

Day 2 in Novi Sad

The market in the morning, the fortress in the evening

Go to the market first, because it stops. Paprika in strings, homemade cheese in tubs, honey, plum brandy in reused bottles, and whatever came out of the Danube this morning; the produce is cheap, the sellers pack up by lunchtime, and it is the least performative thing in this city.

Walk down to the river afterwards. The quay has a promenade, a monument to the people killed on the ice in January 1942, when Hungarian troops shot over a thousand of the city's Serbs and Jews and pushed them under the frozen Danube, and, on a summer evening, half the student population sitting on the steps around it.

In the afternoon cross the bridge for the fortress. Petrovaradin took nearly ninety years to build, covers more than a hundred hectares, and was never taken by anybody, which is a fact the city will supply within ten minutes of your arrival. Below the walls run four levels of galleries, sixteen kilometres of them, some of which you can walk with a guide from the museum.

Stay for the light. The terrace under the clock tower is the classic view of Novi Sad across the water, and the tower itself has its hands reversed, the long one counting hours, so that boatmen down on the river could tell the time at a distance. Have a drink up there. Everybody does.

  1. 08:30

    Fish Market

    Visit

    The city's market, open daily and best before noon: paprika, cheese, honey, fruit, brandy and fresh river fish, at prices that make the restaurants look silly.

  2. 10:30

    Monument to the Victims of Fascism in Novi Sad

    Historic

    A monument on the Danube promenade to the people murdered in the raid of January 1942, and, in the evenings, one of the places young Novi Sad gathers.

  3. 15:00

    Petrovaradin Fortress

    Historic

    A vast Habsburg star fort on the bluff across the river, never captured, with a museum, a clock that runs its hands the wrong way round, and sixteen kilometres of tunnels underneath. Go for late afternoon and stay for sunset.

With more time: The provincial museum near the river covers Vojvodina from the palaeolithic onwards and holds three gilded Roman parade helmets that are among the best surviving anywhere. On the other side of the water, the park below the fortress was once a royal garden and has a sphinx in it, and the sandy river beach a little upstream is where the city swims from June.

Day 3 in Novi Sad

Sremski Karlovci, and a glass of something sweet before the train

Half an hour southeast by bus, at the foot of the vine-covered ridge, is a small baroque town that was once the seat of the Serbian church under Habsburg rule and, for a few months in 1699, the most important place in Europe.

The peace of Karlowitz was negotiated here in a purpose-built round pavilion with a door for each delegation, and it took the Ottomans out of Hungary permanently. The town that grew on the strength of that has one square, a cathedral, a grammar school founded in 1791 and about thirty family wine cellars.

The cathedral is the Orthodox one on the square, baroque outside and dark and gilded within. Look at it, then start on the wine. The local speciality is bermet, a red dessert wine flavoured with herbs and spices to a recipe families keep to themselves, and most cellars will pour you a tasting for the price of a coffee elsewhere. Buy a bottle. It does not travel commercially, so this is the only place you will find it.

Back in Novi Sad in time for the train, having eaten a great deal more than you planned.

  1. 09:30

    St. Nicholas Cathedral

    Visit

    The main Orthodox cathedral of Sremski Karlovci, baroque, on the square where the 1699 peace was signed. Fifteen minutes inside, then look at the fountain and the seminary around it.

  2. 11:00

    A cellar tasting

    Eat

    Family cellars line the streets off the square, most with a bench and a few bottles open. Ask for bermet, which is sweet, spiced and made nowhere else.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch under the vines

    Eat

    Grilled meat, cheese and paprika at a table in a courtyard, with the ridge above you and the Danube below. Two hours if the bus timetable is kind.

With more time: With a full day and a car, the ridge behind the town holds sixteen Orthodox monasteries scattered through beech forest, several of them founded in the fifteenth century by Serbian nobles fleeing south of the Danube. Three or four are easily strung together in an afternoon and none charges to enter.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

The fast railway from Belgrade takes about half an hour and runs many times a day, which makes Novi Sad an easy day trip and a much nicer place to sleep. Buses cover the same route in an hour and a half. Belgrade's airport is 80 km away with direct minibuses.

The centre is flat and small enough to cross on foot in twenty minutes, and cycling is easy. For the fortress, walk over the Varadin bridge in fifteen minutes from the main square, then up the ramp; for Sremski Karlovci, take bus 61 or 62 from the centre, which runs every twenty minutes or so and takes half an hour.

One piece of local history you will see from the bridge: every Danube crossing in this city was destroyed by NATO in 1999, and one of the replacements was still going up twenty years later.

Vojvodina, briefly

This is the flat northern third of Serbia, an autonomous province with six official languages, and it does not look, sound or eat like the rest of the country. The plain was drained and settled deliberately under the Habsburgs by whoever would come, so villages twenty kilometres apart can still be Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian or German in origin.

The food follows: paprika in everything, freshwater fish stew cooked outdoors in a copper pot, sausages, strudel and enormous quantities of it. The wine is better than its reputation and almost none of it leaves the country.

When to come

May, June and September are ideal. The city has a sandy river beach that opens in summer and a genuinely hot July and August, when everybody who is not at the festival is in the water.

The festival itself takes over the fortress for four days in July: if you want it, book accommodation months ahead, and if you do not, avoid that week entirely. Winter is flat, foggy and cheap.

Novi Sad is a city that does not try very hard and does not need to. A square, a river, a fortress that no one ever took, and a hill of vineyards behind it.

Most people give it four hours between trains. Give it two nights and a morning in the wine town, and it becomes the easiest part of any trip through Serbia.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Novi Sad worth visiting, or is it just a day trip from Belgrade?
It works as a day trip, at half an hour each way by fast train, but it is a better place to sleep than to visit: quieter, cheaper and more relaxed than Belgrade, with the fortress, the market and the wine hills all within half an hour. Two nights is a comfortable stay.
What is EXIT and should I plan around it?
A music festival held inside the fortress every July, which began in 2000 as a student movement against Milosevic and now brings close to two hundred thousand people to a city of 300,000. If you want it, book months ahead. If you do not, avoid that week, when rooms triple in price.
Can you get inside the fortress tunnels?
Yes, on a guided tour arranged through the museum inside the fortress, usually at set times and sometimes only with a group. The galleries run on four levels and are cold, low and lit only where the tour goes, and they are the single most interesting thing on the site.
How do I get to Sremski Karlovci?
City buses 61 and 62 run from the centre of Novi Sad every twenty minutes or so and take about half an hour, and there are also a few slow trains. It is 11 km, so a taxi is cheap if you have missed the bus back after a tasting.
Is Novi Sad walkable?
Very. The centre is flat and compact, the pedestrian streets are extensive, and the only walk of any length is over the bridge to the fortress, which takes about fifteen minutes plus the climb.
Can I move these days around?
Copy the plan and reorder it. Keep the market in the morning, because it closes at lunch, and keep the fortress for the end of a day, because the view across the river is the reason to be up there.