The official name of Belgrade is: Beograd (Бeоград), from Beo that in Serbian means white and Grad means city.
Belgrade is the capital of Serbia and one of the most populated cities in South-Eastern Europe.
It is located in a prominent position, where the river Sava merges into the Danube. The historical core of Belgrade, Kalemegdan, was on the right riverbanks. Since 19th Century the city has been expanding to south and east and after the World War II, New Belgrade was built on the left bank of Sava river. In the past due to its position Belgrade was properly called “the gate of the Balkans” and “the door of Middle Europe”.
Belgrade covers an area of 322.268 km² and hosts a population of about 1.750.000 habitants that is equivalent to the 21% of the total population of Serbia. Moreover Belgrade is a young city: more than 40% of its citizens are between 15 and 44 years of age.
Belgrade territory is divided into 17 municipalities: 10 urban municipalities (Čukarica, Voždovac, Vračar, Novi Beograd, Palilula, Rakovica, Savski venac, Stari grad, Zemun, Zvezdara) and 7 suburban municipalities (Barajevo, Grocka, Lazarevac, Obrenovac, Mladenovac, Sopot, Surčin).
Serbian is the official language, part of the group of south Slavic languages; Cyrillic script and Latin script are both officially used and taught in schools. The Serbian Cyrillic has 30 letters (one letter for each phoneme) that makes it unique among scripts.