Tito's World (The Museum of Yugoslavia)
Plus, my Belgrade recommendations
The Museum of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, Serbia is not really a Museum of Yugoslavia so much as Marshal Josip Broz Tito’s Cabinet of Curiosities with Some Yugoslav Bits Thrown In (Assuming You Already Know the Basic History). My date had warned me about the slight misnomer beforehand, but I had to see it to believe it.
For most of its life, this place was known as the “Josip Broz Tito Memorial Centre.” Much more accurate. It became the “Museum of the History of Yugoslavia” in 1996 under Milošević (cue booing sounds), who I suppose had his own grand ambitions of becoming Tito 2.0. That name got truncated to “Museum of Yugoslavia” in 2016. Doesn’t all this renaming feel familiar…
The main, older part of the museum is one long hallway, meaning you do technically have to look at everything, although you can opt for a brisk Ikea-showroom-speedwalk. The first rooms were full of gifts Tito had received from world leaders and dignitaries, and not surprisingly considering Yugoslavia’s role in the third world non-aligned movement, it was a lot of Global South “exotica”: an ivory-handled dagger from Sukarno himself (!), a solitaire game set made of ores and minerals from Madagascar, commemorative stamps from Nasser’s short-lived United Arab Republic. It felt a little bit like being back at the Connecticut estate sales my roommate used to scour for kitchenware.1
We continued on with Tito’s personal belongings, and then finally reached our favorite section, a sampling of everyday Yugoslav design: Podravka canned foods, Kraš chocolate tins, TEŽ lightbulbs, schoolbooks and report cards, 1984 Sarajevo Olympics memorabilia. My date started geeking out over a calculator made in Zagreb by “Digitron.”
Hmm. I may have skipped over some stuff here. Surely there must have been a couple perfunctory vitrines about the history of Yugoslavia 1 (Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1918-1941), but come on now, we were all here for the bigger and better Yugoslavia 2 (Socialist Yugoslavia, 1945-1992). Tito’s Yugoslavia.
I do remember we cursorily skimmed a case of tall decorative totems, which I assumed were more “third world gifts” until I checked the label and learned that they were, in fact, relay batons. Every May, kids would run a symbolic multi-day race across Yugoslavia for Tito’s birthday holding these handmade, often wooden batons.
Before we could move on, a security guard ran down the hall after us and pointed to one that, presumably, he himself had carried as a boy. Yes, he really ran over, and then he pointed to the baton and mimed some more “running” to get his message across bez engleskog. He was taut but non-threatening, like a tap dancer or a Japanese subway cop.2 I could easily imagine him a distance runner. The staff here still dressed like proper big-S Socialists, and the uniform suited his form.3
After finishing the long hallway, we crossed the grounds to the House of Flowers, where Tito and his wife Jovanka are buried. Quite cheerful and relaxed, all things considered. Possibly the most sunlit mausoleum of its kind. (Could you imagine if they put skylights in the Lenin Mausoleum?!) My favorite piece on display was a hand-embroidered tablecloth by one of Tito’s numerous domestic mourners, completed one year after his death in 1980 at the age of 88.
I liked the Museum of Yugoslavia gift shop because they had very little interest in marketing pop socialist aesthetics. Mostly they stocked books. A few t-shirts. Maybe one or two agitprop-y coffee mugs, but no €25 Socialist Realist tote bags, and definitely no overdramatic blocky Cyrillic. They only sold four postcards, and each one was a picture of Tito with a different celebrity: JFK, Che Guevara, Kirk Douglas, and Elizabeth Taylor.
If anything, Yugonostalgics appear to be proud of Yugoslavia’s proximity to Western cultural consumption. Tito’s spectacularly baller life notwithstanding, many average Yugoslavs — unlike their Warsaw Pact neighbors in Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania — also enjoyed nice things like international travel, paid vacation on the Adriatic, and decent cars4, on top of all the normal socialist mainstays like affordable housing and stable jobs. Sure, the ‘90s would make anything else seem positively heavenly in comparison, but you have to admit, this was a pretty sweet deal, wasn’t it?
MY BELGRADE RECOMMENDATIONS
MORE MUSEUMS
Many people like the Nikola Tesla Museum. I get it. Science museums are fun, and more childless adults should visit them. As an aside: Marina Abramović’s brother Velimir Abramović is deeply involved in some bizarre Nikola Tesla-related religious movement and at one point may have been affiliated with the museum, but now seems to be critical of their unwillingness to publish Tesla’s archives in full. Per Abramović, it’s because “they are ashamed of Tesla's — in their opinion — crazy statements, such as, for example, that there is a civilization inside Venus.”
I like the Ethnographic Museum’s collection of folk clothing, jewelry, and furniture, although they didn’t have much English signage when I went. Right across the street, the Yugoslav Film Archive has daily screenings for 200 dinars (less than €2). Serbian subtitles5 only for any foreign films, of course — if it’s a Yugoslav film, you may once in a while get lucky with English subtitles. Their library is also open to the public.
TRANSPORT
If you fly in to the airport, you’ll need to pay cash for the express bus to Slavija Square. All the other local buses and trams are free. Cab drivers are scammers.
The bus terminal is, well… you know. Prepare to pay a certain amount of extra cash for no reason, separate from your bus ticket. They call this a “platform ticket.”
Commit to memory the name of a major landmark close to where you’re staying. This will allow you to ask useful rehearsed lines such as: “does this bus/tram go to Republic Square?” Sticking to eminently answerable, hard yes/no questions is a good way to “get by” in a new language.
SHOPPING
Shopkeepers are not great at English. Almost everyone under the age of 35-40 is.
I bought fresh fruit and produce at the pijaca closest to where I was staying, which was Skadarlija.
Beopolis is the most well-known independent bookstore. If you’re trying to buy textbooks or children’s books for actual language learning, you could try Delfi, Serbia’s Barnes & Noble.
Textile House is a major regional secondhand store chain for when you truly just need cheap garments that will clothe you. I’ve been to multiple across the Balkans.
There’s a fun but pricier “vintage” shop Šmizla (kind owner, minimal English). I bought an old map of gas stations in Yugoslavia, probably from the ‘80s by the neon look of it, published by the state conglomerate Jugopetrol.
Avoid big multinational chains except in emergencies. Prices will be at least 1.5 times what you’d pay in, say, Germany. (In a pinch, I had to buy awful synthetic underwear at H&M, ~850 dinars for a set of three.)
EATING AND GOING OUT
Prices vary wildly. A good number of places are complete rip-offs. If you belatedly realize that the menu is ridiculous but you’re in too deep to leave, just order a coffee and/or rakija, no food.
I strongly suggest asking around for recommendations because venues are changing all the time, opening, closing, reopening, relocating, striking new deals with local authorities/mobsters, etc. That being said:
I went out at Hangar (big RA-y warehouse techno), Ljubimac (standard loud bar with things like wine and kombucha, located in a parking lot with a bunch of other “Westernized” bars), Kvaka 22 (“gallery-bar,” cheap beers), and 20/44 (splav which refused to call itself a splav, recently moved off the river entirely and into a regular old building).
I ate at Pavle Korčagin (Yugonostalgic kitsch, B-minus ćevapi), Stara Hercegovina (trad, big portions, high sodium), and Sač (incredible meats with live music; the catch is that it’s across the river in Zemun). Also, some pizza place I can’t remember. Balkan people are good at pizza.
BATHROOMS
A lot of the public bathrooms are nasty, but not all. The ones at the big famous park you will certainly go to, Kalemegdan, are alright, but you might walk in on some hookups.
Another downtown option is the basement of Hotel Moskva. There should be a staircase to the right after you go in, if I remember correctly? Or ask, “izvinite, da li mogu u WC?” and they will hopefully be nice about it.
The best public bathroom I found is right next to the National Theatre (Narodno pozorište). On the corner, down a clean subway-like staircase. There’s even an attendant.
EDIT: If you are in Belgrade literally, right now (June 2025), you have also hopefully noticed the massive protest(s), which have been sporadically ongoing since November 2024 after a deathly failure of public infrastructure resulting from shoddy, corrupt government contracts. The best article I’ve read about the protests is from the one and only
:Serbia is, like Argentina and Russia, to use the expression coined by V. S. Naipaul, a country with circular history: the same events with different personalities re-occur permanently, and seemingly forever.
She’d look them up on estatesales.net. A great weekend morning activity, honestly!
Is there an overrepresentation of runners on the left?
Shh, the Yugo is fine. It’s basically a Fiat, which Americans also hate.
Subtitles were, as far as I saw, always in Latin and not Cyrillic. For the benefit of visitors from Croatia or Bosnia, maybe?