page_title: Great War Island
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Great War Island / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Satellite view of Great War Island in Belgrade Deutsch: Satellitenaufnahme der Großen Kriegsinsel in Belgrad
context_page_description: Great War Island is a river island in Belgrade, capital of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of Sava and Danube rivers. Though uninhabited, the island is part of the Belgrade City proper, and belongs to the city municipality of Zemun.
context_section_description: Great War Island is not an old geographical feature. Based on the historical data and descriptions of the river battles on the Danube, it is believed that it has been formed in the second half of the 15th century, first as a small sandbank which was then divided and morphed by the Danube's stream. It appeared on the maps for the first time in the 1514 map by the Hungarian cartographer Lázár Deák. Historian Kome chronicled the fall of Zemun to the Turks in 1521 and mentioned the island as the location where all of the imprisoned defenders of the city were interred, including their wives and children. The island gained its militant name due to its history as an important strategic point either for the conquest or the defence of Belgrade. Also in 1521, when Belgrade was under siege by Turkish forces, the majority of their attacks on Belgrade fortress were launched from the island. Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi visited the region in the 1660s and mentioned the island. He wrote about the mosque on the island, named after a certain Ahmet Babalık. One of the earlier names for the island, Babalik Island, came from the name of the mosque.
  The name officially appeared after 1717, when Prince Eugene of Savoy used the island as an attack point in his re-conquest of Belgrade from the Turks. In 1741 a Constantinople convention was signed, which resulted in fixing the border between Austria and Turkey, concerning the islands in the Sava and Danube. By the convention, Turkey obtained the section of the island overlooking the Belgrade, while Austria got the other part, in the direction of Zemun and Banat. In liberating Belgrade in 1806 the rebel army headed by Karađorđe also used the island for military purposes, as the Serbian artillery with 500 soldiers was bombing the Kalemegdan fortress from there. During the offensive in 1915 by Austria-Hungary against Belgrade, Austria-Hungary forces used the island to launch their attacks. After the World War I, island became part of the new Yugoslav state. After 1918, a small colony of 20 destitute inhabitants of Zemun built stilt houses on the island which was then colloquially called "Sirotinjska Ada" (Poor man's Island). Also, a sandbank facing Zemun was adapted into the beach, being predecessor of the modern Lido beach.
  In 1928, building company "Šumadija" proposed the construction of the cable car, which they called "air tram". The project was planned to connect Zemun to Kalemegdan on Belgrade Fortress, via Great War Island. The interval of the cabins was set at 2 minutes and the entire route was supposed to last 5 minutes. The project never realized.
  When construction of Novi Beograd began in 1948, the city government made a decision to completely destroy the island by using its sand and earth to cover the marshes of Syrmia, where new city was to be built. However, the deposits of alluvial materials continually brought onto the island from the Danube completely prevented this from happening. Instead, the smaller Little War Island served this purpose and was nearly destroyed in the process.
  Though officially uninhabited, almost a dozen people live in small shacks in the island's interior. They are mostly retirees who move to the island during the warm season and maintain their vegetable gardens, while in the winter they return to Belgrade.
  In 2005, the island was protected by the state as a landscape of outstanding features. The protected area of 2.11 ha (5.2 acres) includes both the Great War and the Little War islands.
caption: Satellite view of Great War Island
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