Original subtitles

The beautiful coasts of Turkey

and Eastern Europe are visited by millions of us every year.

But just a few miles inland is a whole different world.

One that is intoxicating, mysterious

and steeped in history.

This is such an incredible building.

It was the largest church in the world for a thousand years.

The land where one of the most formidable empires,

lasting six centuries

and spanning continents, was founded.

Tesekkur ederim.

I'm Alice Roberts

and I'm travelling hundreds of miles by train through Turkey

and Eastern Europe.

Oh, wow, look a that. Lovely.

I want to discover the fascinating story...

Go. ..of the Ottoman Empire.

Oh, no.

This is the mausoleum of Osman himself,

the sultan who started the Ottoman dynasty.

Through its distinctive architecture...

Beautiful courtyard.

..its historic leaders...

The early Ottoman sultans had their eye on this prize.

Constantinople.

..and of remnants of its turbulent past.

What a horrific monument.

Having left Turkey behind,

I'm now in the Balkans into which

the Ottoman Empire expanded in the fourteenth century.

Oh, my goodness. Somehow wasn't expecting that.

I'm travelling north to the glorious River Danube in

the Serbian capital.

Belgrade and its fortress really are protecting this gateway to the rest

of Europe.

But I'm starting in Bulgaria,

as I learn more about the Ottoman Empire by train.

This sleeper train is

a 13 hour journey taking me from Turkey into

the Balkan peninsula of Europe.

By the time I get to Sofia I will have clocked up

almost a thousand miles since Adana.

This line is part of

a route that originally opened in 1916 linking Istanbul all

the way to Berlin, The Balkan Express.

It was finally discontinued in the 21st century.

But this night train,

from Istanbul to Sofia, was reintroduced in 2017.

It's almost midnight

and I'm trying to stay awake in readiness for

a passport check some time in the next hour.

Eventually I reach the border.

SHE YAWNS And It's 1.30am.

It's raining.

And I seem to be the last person off the train.

This marks the end of my time in Turkey

and the start of my adventure into Eastern Europe.

SHE YAWNS

No idea where I am.

The timing of the passport check seems a little brutal.

All I want to do is sleep.

But I will have

a nice official record of my journey.

Thank you very much.

And I got a stamp anyway.

A stamp in the passport.

There we go.

Istanbul.

Came in. Going.

It's a relief to wake up in Bulgaria

I'm heading into the heart of the capital Sofia.

The Ottomans battled long and hard

to conquer territories beyond Turkey.

They claimed huge swathes of the middle east,

north Africa and here in Eastern Europe.

And they ruled this territory for centuries.

But, in the end, the Bulgarians needed outside help

to send the Ottomans back to Istanbul.

This is the road to Istanbul.

If I carried on walking in that direction,

I would eventually get all the way back

to that city that I left on the night train.

Arriving here in Sofia.

The road is called Tsarigradsko.

That's the Bulgarian name for Istanbul, Tsarigrad.

The place of the tsar, the place of the king.

Over my shoulder here is another tsar,

a Russian tsar and its Alexander II.

Now he sent troops into Bulgaria at the end of

the 19th century to fight the Ottoman army.

There had been a revolution bubbling up already in what was

to become Bulgaria

and the Ottoman army had exerted

extreme force, there had been terrible reprisals, massacres

and this caught the attention of

the international community. Russia came in pushing

the Ottoman troops all the way back to Istanbul,

and this sowed the seeds for Bulgaria to emerge as

an independent state.

Although this was once Ottoman territory,

the city today reflects a more recent empire,

of sorts, during the Soviet era.

Vast neo-classical buildings from

this period dominate the city.

Life here has been transformed since Bulgaria joined

the EU in 2007.

Sofia's affordable housing

and low cost of living has made it a magnet for artists,

students and new businesses.

Its vibrant streets, though, belie

a city that has struggled at times to come to terms

with its past.

I'm heading to the south side of the city to find one of

the few Ottoman structures still standing,

which only survived because it was incorrectly named.

This is the Roman Wall.

When it was built, in the 16th century,

this area would have been mostly fields.

It's here I've arranged to meet Rossitsa Gradeva,

history professor at

the American University of Bulgaria.

So this is the so-called Roman Wall?

The so-called Roman Wall.

So it's not Roman?

Not exactly. It's early Ottoman actually.

People didn't like very much to associate with

the Ottoman past.

But I think it's

the fact they believed that it's

Roman that saved the structure here.

And what is it? Because it seems very odd

that it is just this wall on its own.

Was it part of a bigger building or something?

No, it's really a strange thing. As you can see,

the mihrab here... Yeah, yeah. ..the praying niche.

The niche that shows the direction of Mecca.

We don't have explanation why and when it was built,

but we know about such praying places outside

the mosque... Right, OK.

..from the time of Mohammed. Mohammed had such

a structure outside the walls of Medina

and Muslims were praying there,

the whole community together

because one mosque may not contain all of them.

I see. It's the first time I've seen this,

It's the first time I've seen a mihrab,

effectively an open-air mosque.

Well, what we believe is that this is where,

because Sofia was on

the way of Ottoman army starting from Medina towards West Vienna.

Yeah. So Sofia was a major stop over. For several days

the whole army will be here and pray when they needed

to pray. Yeah. And this was the perfect site for that.

Yeah, yeah. So outside the city itself.

Rossitsa knows about more traces of the Ottoman Empire in

the city that she wants to show me.

So we will be walking towards the centre of the city.

Tell me about Sofia

and when it becomes part of the Ottoman Empire.

Actually the Ottomans captured it from the Bulgarians in around 1385.

Today Sofia is home to 1.5 million people.

In the earlier Ottoman period it was just 20,000

and the city stopped here at the Perlovska River.

So now we are entering the Ottoman city.

In post Ottoman Bulgaria there was a desire to build

a new national identity which led to

a wide destruction of almost everything associated with

the Ottoman past.

First up is a mosque which survived

the purge by being transformed into a Christian church.

Who was the sultan at the time?

Suleiman the Magnificent. Suleiman the Magnificent.

Was it his chief architect who designed it?

Yes, it's Sinan.

Sinan. Who designed the huge mosque in Istanbul.

And plenty of others.

So this is now a church but it was originally a mosque?

Yes, it was built as a mosque in 1548.

This is the entrance of the original building. OK.

This is a very regular... It's a square space.

Yeah, this is the original structure, the original space.

Incredible dome.

The dome. Sinan was so good at creating domes.

It's called the black mosque

because there was a lot of black granite

and it was lead laden, the dome, on top .

Yeah, covered in lead. Yeah. Yeah.

Is that new because there is an apse there?

Absolutely, because

the apse is from the beginning of the 20th century.

So that's been pushed out. That was the Christianisation

of the building. Yeah.

The walls and ceilings feature gilded images of Christian prophets

and angels.

The decorative painting was only completed in 1996 by young

local artists.

So when Bulgaria became part of the Ottoman Empire,

was there a process of conversion that happened there?

Well, as soon as the Ottomans took a place,

conquered by force or surrendered,

there would immediately be people who would convert,

sometimes by force,

sometimes lured by advantages

to hold positions in the Ottoman Empire.

It's such a complex process, isn't it? It's very complex.

We can't tell that it's just pragmatism, or just great religion.

What's fascinating is

the relationship between state and religion.

That they're completely intertwined. Absolutely.

We don't talk about private

and public space, it's... Religion is everywhere.

Yeah.

The final location Rossitsa is taking me to is

the earliest building in Sofia.

Just like the Seven Saints church,

this building has also gone through

a religious transition.

The Rotunda, as it's known,

is sandwiched by Soviet-style government buildings,

and it was a Christian church for centuries.

When the Ottomans came, they converted it into a mosque.

But today it's a Christian church once again.

But it didn't start off its life as a religious building.

So this is the Rotunda. When does this date to?

Beginnings fourth century, for sure.

Oh, OK. So that's Roman.

So if it it's fourth century, it's very unlikely to have been

a church from the beginning.

No, at the beginning, we don't know the exact dedication

or functionality of the building.

Probably related to a public baths,

or baths connected to the towers of the emperors,

probably some other administrative building.

And in the Soviet period, it was shut?

It was used as a museum. A museum.

So it's built earlier

and as the Roman Empire becomes Christianised,

it becomes used as a church.

There was Christian population here before

the official Christianisation. The official adoption of Christianity.

So Sofia had developed as a centre of Christianity.

Mm.

When you enter inside you will see paintings.

I love archangel Michael. You have to find him.

Beautiful archangel

with beautiful eyes looking at you from the dome, almost the dome.

I can hear that there is a service going on in there

at the moment, but I would love to go in and look at those paintings.

You can find a quite nice

combination of the music and the painting.

I'll go and have a look. Thank you very much.

It's a busy, working church, but visitors are welcome,

even during services.

The murals were painted between the 10th

and 14th centuries.

Rossitsa's favourite painting is

the archangel Michael up there on

the ceiling looking down at us.

Despite five centuries of the Ottomans in Bulgaria,

there is scant evidence of their empire here today.

Later, I'll be heading to Serbia to learn about

the dark days of the end of Ottoman rule there.

I'm in central Sofia on my quest to learn about

the vast Ottoman Empire.

Sofia is the first major city on

the road into Europe from Turkey.

To the north it is framed by the Balkan Mountains.

The city's full of enormous parks,

which once earned it the title of Europe's Green capital.

It was an important city within the Roman Empire

and later, for the Ottomans.

But there seems to be a bit more visible evidence of

the Romans, even though they were much earlier.

These extensive remains of Roman fourth

to sixth century buildings were discovered during

the construction of the metro station.

I'm meeting Kirila Atanasova at the National Archaeology Museum.

Kirila. Hello, Alice. Lovely to meet you. Lovely to meet you.

I'm so excited about going into the Archaeological Museum.

Yeah. Me too, let's go.

Kirila is a researcher at the University of Sofia

and she wants to show me a few important exhibits here.

The museum is in what was once a mosque,

built by the Ottomans.

It was constructed under the orders of

a high ranking governor,

known in the Ottoman period as a Grand Vizier.

And some of the original Ottoman wall decoration can be seen through

the flaking paint.

It was commissioned by one of

the Grand Viziers of Mehmed II.

Oh. His name was Mahmud Pasha.

So Mehmed II who conquered Constantinople?

Exactly. The same guy. His name was Mahmud Pasha.

And he commissioned this?

Yes. He was very prominent

because he led the conquest of

the Ottomans, the expansion to Bosnia

and to the Black Sea coast. He was very influential.

The museum includes exhibits spanning thousands of years,

with some exceptional artefacts from the Roman period.

The first piece Kirila wants to show me is

a poster advertising some entertainment for the locals.

So here what we are going to see is what I call Third Century PR.

This relief here?

Yeah, It's a poster from the third century

and shows what was played at the amphitheatre.

Isn't that fantastic?

Yeah.

Is this a crocodile?

Yeah, I guess so. It looks like a crocodile.

This looks like a lion here attacking a...

I think it's a horse because it's got hooves.

It's got an odd tail for a horse, but it has hooves.

And these are really odd. Look at that.

Because they're human figures but they look like they're wearing...

..dog masks. Yeah, I think you're right.

Really strange.

But, yeah, a kind of poster

for upcoming attractions at the amphitheatre. Yes.

Yeah. And this amphitheatre, according to some archaeologists,

was one of the largest in the Roman Empire.

Really? That speaks to the size and importance of Roman Sofia.

What was it called?

Serdika. Serdika.

It's very easy

to get waylaid by all the incredible Roman artefacts here,

but there are some Ottoman pieces too.

So here we have an Ottoman helmet.

That is from the 16th or 17th century

and it's gilded bronze.

And you can see the Arabic script all over it, yeah.

So presumably the kind of helmet that would've been worn in parades

and not so much actually going into battle.

I don't think it's very practical

for battles. Yeah.

It's in extremely good condition.

Have you got some more Ottoman artefacts along here?

Yeah, over there. These all date to the Ottoman period as well?

Yeah. They're from the Ottoman period.

Again, covered in Arabic script.

Very intricate, isn't it?

What were they used for?

Some of them should be used for bathing or for water.

Yeah. Imagine using this in your everyday life.

Yeah. It would be quite fancy.

The end of the Ottoman reign in Bulgaria came with

a heavy loss of life.

15,000 Bulgarians were killed in what is known as

the April Uprising.

Although the end of the 19th century may seem

a long time ago,

it's Kirila's generation that are just coming to terms

with their family history under the Ottomans.

What's the perception of

the Ottoman empire looking back to that period from

in Bulgarian history today?

Well, for sure there is the family trauma.

If I may say, for example, my family,

one of my great great grandfathers was killed during the April revolt.

That's in the 19th century.

Yes, in 1876.

And, ah, well, we have the memory of that but of course...

..we should look forward to our future

and, um, I think we should start accepting our past.

And remember it, not forget it, but also move forward.

Mmm. Cos it's a traumatic time,

the end of the Ottoman empire for Bulgaria.

For sure, not only for Bulgaria but most of the Balkan countries.

End of an era is always traumatic for people.

Yeah. The end of what they knew and the beginning

of something that is unknown was very stressful for them.

Some of the difficulties we see now, politically, have their roots

centuries ago.

For sure, but we need to find a mechanism to move forward...

Mmm. ..and to, um, find a way to live together.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's, I suppose that is the lesson from history.

We can see what happens when things go wrong.

For sure. Yeah.

I'm taking the Metro to Sofia's central railway station

but feeling slightly nervous about my next train.

I want to head north across

the border from Bulgaria into Serbia to the city of Nis.

I don't understand this.

I know... I know that there's a railway between Sofia

and Nis in Serbia.

But I just cannot seem to buy a ticket.

I have been looking online. It says it's 96 miles.

It's says it would take me a day

and ten hours to walk there, which is some good going,

and doesn't involve any sleep. I don't want to walk,

I want to get a train.

I would like to travel to Nis.

Can I buy a ticket to Nis?

No tickets, no trains.

There is no train to Nis? No train to Nis.

Repair.

Repair.

Oh, OK, so there is normally a railway line from Sofia to Nis.

I am going to have to get a taxi then I think,

maybe a taxi.

OK, I will investigate. Thank you very much.

Let's go Let's go.

You don't sit in traffic like this on a train, do you?

I'm not used to it. It's like being thwarted.

It's now the Ottoman Empire mostly by train.

So much less pleasant than travelling by train.

When researching the story of

the Ottoman Empire everyone told me I must come to Nis.

I've crossed the border from Bulgaria into Serbia.

I'm stopping off here before I head up to Belgrade.

Nis is fairly modest in size,

with a population of 250,000,

but it is one of the oldest cities in Europe.

The Nis Fortress is the centrepiece.

It's one of the best preserved Ottoman forts in the world.

Today, it's used for recreation,

as a venue for international cultural events,

for sport and just hanging out with family and friends.

This is the historic Nis Fortress built right on

the banks of the Nisava River, first by the Romans,

then it was developed further in the Byzantine period

and it was last re-fortified in 1723 under the Ottomans

and within its walls it preserves all those different phases

of its history.

The Ottomans dominated Nis for 500 years.

And these were mostly peaceful times

for those living under their rule.

But it was towards the end of their reign in

the early 19th century when tensions grew

and skirmishes turned into a series of bloody battles.

I'm meeting a young researcher who can tell me about

a tragic Ottoman monument.

It's a structure that became known as the Skull Tower.

The Skull Tower today is hidden from view,

inside this chapel,

which was purpose built around it in 1894.

Ognjen.

Hello. Lovely to meet you. Nice to meet you, too.

So this is the chapel that contains

the famous Skull Tower? So what happened?

The monument behind us is connected with one battle

from the first Serbian uprising.

The fight was on 31st May, 1809.

The numbers of the Ottoman troops were far greater than

the Serbian ones.

And when the commander perceived

that victory was impossible, he shot

the gun powder storage and took his life,

all the remaining soldiers and all of the Ottoman soldiers.

He sacrificed himself and his troops?

Yeah. Yeah. So in the end the total number killed on

the Serbian side was between 3,000 and 4,000. Really?

But the number killed of the Ottoman troops were two

to three times greater. Right.

And the governor of the Ottoman troops, he ordered that

the skulls of the dead Serbian soldiers were collected,

and used for the building of the monument that is behind us.

I mean, it seems to be a story that harks back to

the early middle ages... Yeah.

..where you saw such atrocities happening.

Yeah. It harks back

to things like Trajan's Column where you've got soldiers carrying

the heads of dead enemies on spikes.

Displaying the dead heads of enemies is something that

is known in history

and this is the last time it was used, as far as I know,

and this is the only surviving monument of this kind.

Yeah.

So the tower still exists as a monument to that battle

but also as a memorial to

the people that lost their lives. Yes.

Yeah. Shall we take a look? Sure.

Oh, my goodness. They're right there as you come in.

Somehow I wasn't expecting that.

I didn't expect to immediately see the tower.

Originally this tower contained 952 skulls.

Some have been stolen,

some have been destroyed

and some have been buried.

58 remain.

What a horrific monument.

As an anatomist I am used to looking at human bones,

but these skulls represent

a terrible episode in Serbian history.

It's interesting when you look at skulls because

the first impression is,

it's a skull.

And then you start to look at the details and you start to compare

the different faces and you can see how they differ.

You can see that some have wider cheekbones, narrower jaws...

..maybe a taller skull here.

Maybe a bigger brow ridge in some of them.

And you start to see the faces.

Yeah. And recognise that these are all individuals and...

..each one is a person.

Can't help thinking about all

the people left behind, as well.

All these men, thousands of men, died that day.

They've got families where fathers,

husbands, grandfathers...

..have gone.

The Skull Tower was originally built right beside

the road, for all to see. It was designed to instil fear,

suppressing any more thoughts of an uprising.

But it failed.

Instead, the desire to rid Nis

of Ottoman control had been galvanised.

In the morning, I leave Nis for Belgrade,

but with an hour of daylight left,

I've come back to Nis Fortress.

Like all Ottoman territories,

Nis was ultimately ruled by the sultan.

Beneath him in the hierarchy, were the Grand Viziers,

then Governors and then an elite force known as

the Janissaries.

Janissaries were similar to

the slave soldiers of the Roman Empire.

Many of them here in Nis would have been Serbs,

keeping watch on their own people.

So this,

hidden away in the Nis Fortress, is the Bali Bey mosque,

and it was ordered to be built in

the 16th century by Balia,

who was Janissary commander.

Now the Janissaries were absolutely crucial to

the Ottomans keeping control of their vast empire.

They were an elite fighting force

and a particular stratum of society

and they were

the children who were taken from non-Muslim families,

children taken and then brought up as Muslims

and trained to join this military force

and then deployed all across the empire.

But over time they became powerful in their own right. They even started

to vie for power with the sultan himself.

Nis was eventually liberated from

Ottoman control in 1878.

Tomorrow I head to the capital Belgrade

to find out how post-Ottoman Serbia began to take shape

and how changing the Serbian language

would play a significant role.

In this European chapter of my Ottoman adventure,

I'm heading towards the Serbian capital city.

After arriving in Sofia on the overnight sleeper train,

and then a journey into Nis disrupted by engineering works,

I am hoping to take a normal train ride.

I'm heading 150 miles northwest on a train that likes

to stop at every station.

This train stops a lot.

There all these small villages and towns...

..scattered along

the line in this amazing green countryside.

Is it stopping? I don't know.

Ooh, it might be.

Yes, it is. There's a little platform.

Off we go again.

They'll announce the next station.

I think.

PA: Next station...

This may not be the quickest way to get from Nis

to Belgrade

but it's a wonderful way to appreciate

the Serbian countryside as we go.

Now, in the 15th century much of this was already in

the possession of the Ottoman empire under Mehmed II,

the conqueror who took Istanbul,

and also pushed

the empire further into south east Europe.

This whole area was known as Rumelia.

The land that had been taken from the Byzantine empire,

the Roman lands,

the lands where orthodox Christians lived.

But Mehmed II never managed

to take Belgrade that was still held by the Hungarians.

It would be one of his successors, Suleiman the Magnificent,

in the 16th century who would finally capture that city.

And I've been reading about all of

the politics in Europe at the time, which was in turmoil.

There were these shifting alliances between Frances I of France,

Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor.

Henry VIII got involved from time to time.

And a lot of land in Europe was up for grabs.

Suleiman the Magnificent spotted his chance while there was all this

turmoil going on and finally captured Belgrade

and then actually carried on going into the kingdom of Hungary.

Belgrade, or Beograd to give it its real name,

means white city.

It's a name taken from

the white fortress that has guarded the city

for over 2,000 years.

The Ottomans seized Belgrade from

the Kingdom of Hungary in 1521...

..and apart from a 20 year period in

the mid 18th century, they ruled here for over 350 years.

The 19th century saw Serbia gradually extracting itself from

the Ottoman Empire.

By the end of the century it was recognised as

a completely independent state.

It was in 1867 that

the last Ottoman troops were expelled from the fortress

and after that all of the mosques in

the city were destroyed apart from one.

This one.

There were 273 mosques in Belgrade during

the Ottoman period.

When Serbia extracted itself from the empire

the Minister of Education

and Church Affairs selected the Bajrakli Mosque

to be preserved for Muslims coming

to Belgrade on business.

All the other mosques were destroyed.

This one is a classic design.

A dome sits on a square block,

it has a honeycombed mihrab

for praying towards Mecca and a balcony for the women.

One of the few other surviving Ottoman buildings in

the city is tucked away,

squeezed in between shops and cafes.

Originally a family home, then a school,

it is now a museum.

And It is dedicated to two men who represent

the spread of Enlightenment in a post-Ottoman Serbia.

Hello. Deyna and Marina, really, really lovely to meet you.

Welcome to the museum.

I'll just pop my bag down there, shall I? OK.

The museum is a key venue for Serbian school visits.

This section is dedicated to Dositej Obradovic.

That's him, presumably. Yes.

One of the most important portraits of Dositej

and you will see a lot of books.

He's very proud of his pile of books, though, isn't he? Yes.

He dedicated his whole life to books.

Under centuries of Ottoman rule

the spoken Serbian language had evolved,

but written Serbian with elements of Greek and Russian,

remained somewhat stuck in the past.

Many ordinary Serbs couldn't even read and understand it.

Dositej wanted to change that.

So he was, presumably then,

starting to write down the spoken language.

Yes, that's right he wanted to make peace

with those differences between official

and family or spoken language.

Dositej himself moved a lot, he travelled quite a bit...

You can see it on the map.

We can see it on the map. You can see all the dots where he travelled

and all these places was his home.

And he learned 11 foreign languages.

When he came back he had this final idea of what he wanted to do.

So is he bringing the enlightenment to Serbia? Yes. That's right.

He's the first representative of enlightenment in Serbia.

Dositej learned on foot

and he had a chance to see the future centuries.

So he was a visionary man as well.

What a brilliant saying, say it again.

It was his saying.

So you learn by travelling

and you have a vision of the future.

Yes, that's right. That's right. Amazing.

The other visionary remembered here is Vuk Karadzic.

And what does Vuk mean? Does that mean anything?

It's a wolf. Wolf?

Yes. Great name, great name.

Where Dositej formed a contemporary Serbian language,

Vuk created a new Serbian alphabet.

These are his private objects from his studio, his office.

Vuk's personal possessions here include his prosthetic leg,

his trademark Fez hat and several portraits and busts.

This portrait is put on contemporary Serbian money.

So we have this portrait on ten Dinars.

Oh, yes, there he is.

Young wolf.

Demonstrating how important he is.

That's right. I'd better give you back that ten Dinars.

Thank you.

What was his career? Was he an educator?

What did he do that was so important?

So one of the reasons we are so proud of him

and all the kids know about him,

is because he reformed finally our language.

So it's very easy. We have 30 letters,

you read as is written, so we don't have double letters,

we don't have letters that you don't read.

So it's very easy when you go to the school

and you need to learn the letters. It's very, very easy.

So you don't have what we have in English

where you have consonants modifying the sounds of vowels?

No, fought all that and he made this perfect system

of 30 sounds in our language

and, in our speaking, and 30 symbols. So 30 letters.

And was there resistance to that?

Yes. Of course.

Of course. He had supporters, he had opponents as well.

And one of the biggest protestors was the church.

Oh, really? Of course.

Yeah, because he wanted to transform the official language of the church,

so it's really interfering with the job of the church.

I mean, he was obviously successful

because the written language of Serbian today is

the language he created.

That's right. It was a lifetime struggle.

He was really stubborn with his work

and he never wanted to give up.

It's happening at an interesting time, cos it's obviously happening

at the same time that Serbia is removing itself from

the sphere of influence of the Ottoman Empire.

Is it bound up with that? Is it bound up with ideas of Serbian identity?

It is. He didn't fight on the battlefield as

the rest of his generation. His fight was something else.

Yeah. Yeah.

The museum is a hidden gem in Belgrade's city centre.

As I head to the Kalemegdan Fort at the edge of the city,

I'm struck by the lingering influence of

Ottoman centuries here.

The after effects came to a head in the 1980s with

the Kosovo war which was rooted in

the expulsion of Muslims from post-Ottoman Serbia

a hundred years earlier.

On the final leg of my journey, I'll be travelling

to Romania and then Hungary,

the western-most limit of the empire.

This fortress, the Kalemegdan Fortress,

it dominates Belgrade today.

It's absolutely massive

and it's in this really imposing position in

the landscape at the confluence of the Sava

and the Danube rivers.

So Belgrade and its fortress really are protecting this gateway to

the rest of Europe.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media