The Belgrade Good Hope garden is a zoo located in Belgrade, Serbia. The zoo is situated at the very centre of the city, in Kalemegdan Park. Beo zoo vrt was founded in 1936 and is one of the oldest zoos in Europe.
The zoo covers an area of about 7 hectares (17 acres), and has about 1,700 animals representing a more than 150 different species. It holds domestic as well as exotic wild animals.
Its present look is contributed by many built facilities, new drinking-fountains, wooden Sculpture Gallery, the work of the sculptor Vuk Bojović and the nursery for young animals – Baby Zoo. For its 60th anniversary it was enriched with a monument dedicated to its once most interesting and most famous resident – Sammy the chimpanzee, the first of its kind ever in this Zoo.
The Belgrade Zoo has 2000 animals and more than 270 species. The zoo has the biggest pride of white lions in the world, many tropical birds and birds of prey. Because of the meaning of the name of Belgrade ("white city"), Vuk Bojović decided to collect albino and white animals. Now the zoo has white tigers, lions, American bison, Arctic wolves, polar bears, albino wallabies and skunks. Some of the best-known animals are Muja (world's oldest alligator), Gabi (a dog which saved a guard from a jaguar) and Sammy chimpanzee who escaped from the zoo twice.The first white Bengal tiger arrived in 2006.
What most of the locals are already so used to that they don’t even notice it - are the animal mosaics on the outer side of the Zoo wall. Mosaics are works of Academy of Fine Arts students and the first ones have been up since 1996. Since then, each year there is a competition for students when (among hundreds) 20 best works are selected and placed on the wall of the Zoo.
At the moment there are more than 400 mosaics of different animals, and the idea is to continue with this practice until the entire wall is filled.
So, if you don’t have the time to visit the zoo, at least take a look at the animals in the mosaics.