Sava Centar

Sava Centar is an international congress and cultural centre on the Sava riverfront, a 1979 construction that was one of socialist Yugoslavia's most ambitious civic buildings. Designed in the style of late modernism that Yugoslavia did well — clean geometry, quality materials, optimistic scale — it housed a concert hall, conference rooms, a hotel, and business facilities in a complex intended to project Yugoslav sophistication to the world. It still functions in something close to its original capacity.

The building is worth a look for its architecture and for the views from the riverside terrace along the Sava. It stands as a reasonably well-preserved example of the ambition that ran through Yugoslav urban design in the 1970s, when Novi Beograd was being built as a showcase of a third way between East and West.

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A story
Sava Centar was built for a purpose that never quite arrived. It was designed in 1979 as the venue for the 1980 Non-Aligned Movement summit, which Tito was expected to host. Tito died in May 1980, the summit was moved to Havana, and the gleaming new congress centre that had been built for him opened to much quieter events than planned.