Bežanija

Bežanija (Serbian Cyrillic: Бежанија, pronounced [bɛʒǎnija]) is an urban neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is located in Belgrade's municipality of Novi Beograd, in the Syrmia region.

Bežanija is located west of the downtown Belgrade, across the Sava river, in the Syrmia region. It is situated in the central part of the Novi Beograd municipality, on the southern extension of the elongated, crescent-shaped yellow loess ridge of Bežanijska kosa. The ridge (or slope, as it is called in Serbian, kosa) gives its name to the northern extension of Bežanija, Bežanijska Kosa, and stretches to the right banks of the Danube in the neighborhood of Zemun. Once a suburb of Belgrade, separated from it by the vast marshlands on the Sava's left bank, Bežanija today forms one completely urbanized area with Belgrade thanks to the rapid development of Novi Beograd after the World War II.

Bežanija experienced a rapid growth of population after 1948 as it was almost immediately attached to the newly constructed city-within-the city of Novi Beograd. It became a local community (Serbian: mesna zajednica) within the Novi Beograd, and as municipal internal boundaries changed a lot in the 1970s, despite further expansion, census showed a reduced number of population as many border areas (entirely or partially) were detached from Bežanija (Bežanijska kosa, blocks 61-65, etc.).

Population of Bežanija (in 1921 and 1953 it was still a separate settlement):

Today, Bežanija extends to the northeast into Bežanijska kosa and the west into Ledine.

Bežanija is the oldest part of today's Novi Beograd, where a settlement existed from the neolithic to the Roman period.

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