Belgrade Women's Histories Walking Tour

Our guide will meet you at the entrance of SKC. It is an important place for remembering the history of the second-wave feminist and anti-war movements in former Yugoslavia due to the fact that it hosted The international conference Comrade Woman: Women’s Question – A New Approach? (Drug-ca Žena: Žensko Pitanje – Novi Pristup?) in 1978. It was the first autonomous feminist meeting in former Yugoslavia, and beyond—the first conference of this kind initiated in non-Western-European context, and in a socialist country. Comrade Woman gathered a number of significant feminist theorists and artists from various different cities in Yugoslavia. Together with the guide you will discuss different thematic questions: women, capitalism, social change; women’s culture; and the role of women in revolutionary movements and the beginning of the Yugoslav Wars.

In this part you will be visiting the monument of Nadezhda Petrovic, the Serbia's most famous expressionist and fauvist female artist. Then our guide will offer you to sit on the lawn in a circle. She will share some archival photographs that depicted well-known anti-war actions organised by Women in Black in the early 1990s that took place in Pionirski park. The park is also near by the House of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia in front of which one of the iconic scenes happened during the anti-war protests when a tank was parked in front of the building.

The tour will continue by passing school named after Drinka Pavlovic, a Yugoslav teacher, participant in the People's Liberation War of Yugoslavia (1941-1945). On the school's facade you will be able to see a mural that celebrates gender-sensitive language. In this part our guide will talk about present-day struggles around gender equality in language.

The Republic Square is one of the central city squares in Belgrade and the main meeting point. In this part of the tour our guide will share some more archival photographs that depicted anti-war protests actions taken place at the Republic Square in the 1990s. She will talk about The Rimtutituki which was an anti-war project and rock supergroup featuring Ekatarina Velika, Električni Orgazam and Partibrejkers members. These rock bands decided to perform a concert that would rise awareness about the Yugoslav wars and spoke against mobilization in Belgrade. During the concert on the Republic Square they performed anti-war songs in an open truck while circulating the Belgrade streets.

The last stop will be near a mural devoted to Jelisaveta Načić (1878–1955) who was a famous Serbian architect. She is remembered as a pioneer who inspired women to become architects even though that at the time it was considered as men's job. She was also the first female chief architect in Serbia. In 1903, she designed the Little Staircase in Belgrade's Kalemegdan Park. Her most notable work is Kralj Petar I (King Peter I) Elementary School and the Moravian-styled Alexander Nevsky Church (1929) in Belgrade. At the end of the tour the guide offers the visitors to go to Kuća Umetnica, an amazing women-run cafe and workshop's space.