Kalvarija (Zemun)

Kalvarija, also formerly known as Marija Bursać (Serbian: Калварија or Марија Бурсаћ) is an urban neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is located in Belgrade's municipality of Zemun.

Kalvarija is located southwest of downtown Zemun. It borders the neighborhoods of Sava Kovačević on the north, Železnička Kolonija on the west, the northernmost extension of Bežanijska Kosa on the south and Tošin Bunar on the east and southeast.

Kalvarija is one of three hills on which the old town of Zemun developed. The other two are Ćukovac, into which Kalvarija extends in the northeast, and Gardoš, on the right bank of the Danube. However, those hills are not natural features. Zemun loess plateau is the former southern shelf of the ancient, now dried, Pannonian Sea. Modern area of Zemun's Donji Grad was regularly flooded by the Danube and the water would carve canals through the loess. Citizens would then build pathways along those canals and so created the passages, carving the hills out of the plateau. Today it appears that Zemun is built on several hills, with passages between them turned into modern streets, but the hills are actually manmade. In 1883 Austrian general Laudon built a trench through the loess to make way for the railway, thus creating the fourth artificial hill, known today as Bežanijska Kosa. Laudon's trench, whose remnants still can bee seen but are turned into an informal settlement, marked to border between the south Kalvarija and north Bežanijska Kosa.

The name is often used just for the old section of the neighborhood. Western, modern part of the neighborhood was officially called Marija Bursać, after a Yugoslav Partisan war hero. It is also name of the central street in the neighborhood and name of the local community (mesna zajednica), municipal sub-administrative unit which also coverd Old Kalvarija, with a population of 11,002 in 2002. Surrounding neighborhoods are also named in memory of Partisans, like the commander Sava Kovačević, or battles, like the Battle of Sutjeska (Sutjeska). By 2011 census, most of the local communities of the urban Zemun area were merged into one called Zemun.

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