TOURISM IN BELGRADE BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS – based on the documents of the Historical Archives of Belgrade

Abstract

Numerous archival funds, from administrative authorities and professional associations to periodicals, indirectly provide information about the development of the tourism industry. The most relevant of them is the documentation of the Chamber of Commerce Department for Tourism and the City of Belgrade Department for Press and Tourism. While the former Department provides information on tourism for the whole Kingdom of Yugoslavia area, the latter one is engaged in the establishment and development of tourist activities in Belgrade, most often in cooperation with our oldest travel agency Putnik. The opening of the Belgrade Fair in 1937 marked rapid evolvement of event tourism; regular spring and autumn fairs had 80,000 to 250,000 visitors in Belgrade from that period, which had approximately 300,000 inhabitants. Visiting international exhibitions organized by the Association Cvijeta Zuzorić and the Prince Paul's Museum attracted large number of visitors to Belgrade, and boosted cultural tourism to unsurpassed level, as well as active international cooperation with all European countries. The Fair and the Museum, Cvijeta Zuzorić and Putnik, are the best representatives of the European and regional cooperation with Belgrade in the 1930s. Tourism was taken into consideration by some great men, such as Miloš Crnjanski and Milan Kašanin, in their own way.

Keywords: Archive, Interwar, Exhibitions, Tourism, Culture