The hook
Serbia's easygoing second city, spread along the Danube beneath a huge star-shaped fortress that hosts one of Europe's big summer music festivals, backed by a ridge dotted with old monasteries.
01Why it's worth it
Novi Sad is the capital of Vojvodina, the flat, multi-ethnic northern plain that spent centuries under Habsburg rather than Ottoman rule, and it feels calmer and more Central European than the rest of Serbia. Its landmark is the Petrovaradin fortress, a vast 18th-century star fort on a bluff over the river, complete with a clock tower whose hands are reversed so boatmen could read it from afar and famously a labyrinth of underground tunnels. Each summer the fortress becomes the stage for EXIT, a music festival that draws crowds from across the continent. South of town, the low wooded ridge of Fruška Gora shelters a scatter of Orthodox monasteries and small wineries, an easy rural counterpoint. It is an unhurried, friendly city rather than a headline destination.
02How to experience it
Walk up to Petrovaradin fortress for the river view and the odd reversed clock, and time a summer visit for EXIT if festivals are your thing. Drive or cycle into Fruška Gora for the monasteries and wine. The pedestrian old town is made for slow café afternoons.