Kalemegdan Traditional Geocache
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Kalemegdan - fortress and park
Kalemegdan is a fortress and park in an urban area neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is located in Belgrade's municipality of Stari Grad. Kalemegdan means "castle square" in Turkish.
The most beautiful and biggest park in Belgrade, which is also the most important cultural and historical complex, in which the Belgrade Fortress stands high above the Sava and Danube confluence. The name Kalemegdan applies only to the spacious plateau surrounding the Fortress, which was turned into a park in the eighties of the XIX century. When the Fortress served as Belgrade's chief military stronghold, the plateau was a place from which the enemy was kept under observation and where preparations were made for combats. Its name derives from the Turkish words kale (fort) and megdan (field). The Turks also called it Fichir-bair, which means "the contemplation hill".
Its conversion into a park began by Prince Mihailo Obrenovic's order, once the Fortress was surrendered to the Serbs (1867). The conceptual designs were made by Emilijan Josimovic, the first Serbian urbanist. The greenery was planted between 1873 and 1875, when the commanding officer of the Fortress was Colonel Dragutin Žabarac, who was an aide-de-camp to Prince Miloš Obrenovic during his second rule.
The planned development of Kalemegdan began in 1890, when the military authorities handed the park over to the Belgrade civilian authorities. The mayor of Belgrade at that time, Nikola Pašic, approved the first credit amounting to 10,000 dinars for the regulation of Kalemegdan. In 1905, the park was expanded with the development of Mali (small) Kalemegdan, which spreads from the Cvijeta Zuzoric Art Pavilion to the Zoo.
Before the First World War, Kalemegdan spread to the now still existing stone stairway (leading to the lower terrace). The ground beyond this stairway remained completely untouched and overgrown with weeds until 1929. In 1931, the park expanded also to Upper Town. Monuments to many famous cultural and public persons were erected in the park. Kalemegdan now includes the Military Museum, Cvijeta Zuzoric Art Pavilion, City Institute for Protection of Cultural Monuments, Zoo, a children's amusement park, a large number of sports fields, restaurants and so on.
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(Decrypt)
Ynfg ynggvpr (qbbe onef) ba gur yrsg, evtug hccre pbeare.