Nis
The pleasant university town of Niš (Ниш), 235km southeast of Belgrade, is a useful stopover point between Belgrade and Sofia or Skopje. Its inhabitants have a definite small-town pride, as well they might: this is the birthplace of Constantine, the Roman emperor responsible for the conversion of the whole empire to Christianity. Its collection of intriguing – if macabre – sights is a gritty reminder of the darker sides to Serbia’s history, but the focus in the cafés and bars crammed with students is all on having a good time. The city’s centrepiece is its main square, Trg Kralja Milana, which sits across the Nišava from Niš Fortress.
Ćele Kula
The fortress apart, Niš does suffer from a surfeit of rather grim sights. The first, to your right as you leave the fortress, is the miniature blue-domed memorial chapel perched on the lawn, which commemorates the local people killed in the NATO bombings. East of the centre on Brače Taskoviča, Ćele Kula is more gruesome still. It dates from 1809, when Stevan Sinđelić, commander of a nationalist uprising, found his men surrounded by the Turkish army on nearby Čegar Hill and took drastic action against his adversaries, firing into his gunpowder supplies and blowing up most of the Turks and all the Serbs around him. Following the battle, to deter future rebellion the ruling Pasha ordered that the heads of the Serbian soldiers killed in the battle be stuffed and mounted on the tower; 952 went into the making of this macabre totem pole, though today only 58 remain.
Crveni Krst
Most evocative of all the town's sight is the derelict Crveni Krst concentration camp, a ten-minute walk down busy Bulevar 12 Februar from the bus station, where the hand-painted German signs for the washroom, messroom and kitchen make it all seem very recent. The barbed-wire fences and watchtowers, so familiar from camps in Poland and Germany, are a reminder that the displacement and genocide of millions was a truly pan-European operation.
The fortress
A Roman fortress once stood here – a circle of Roman tombstones remains inside – but the current fortifications date from the beginning of the eighteenth century. Enter from the main Istanbul Gate facing the bridge; inside, the town authorities have put real effort into making this a place residents can enjoy, with the beautiful mosque of Bali Beg converted into an exhibition space and the row of cafés in the shadow of the fortress’s inner wall a cool spot to unwind. Each August the whole fortress is given over to the Nišville jazz festival.