Museums and monuments are a very important touristic attraction of Belgrade, and at the same time they are the biggest source of frustration for the foreign tourist; one of the prominent examples of Belgrade is not for tourists . The Museums and monuments open to the public have plenty of personnel, but few of them have guides qualified and capable of speaking in some foreign language. The museum bookshops typically have very few catalogues and monographes, almost all in Serb. Be prepared for very instructive, but also very frustrating visits, because the collections on display contain information which is mostly new for the average tourist, but which is hard to decipher. Some museum are closed, sometimes for reasons which are not explained at all to the tourist; and some do not actually exist any more.
The only systematic sources of information on Museums and exhibitions are in the journal Weekly Beograd , in English, which is on sale at Plato and at few other book shops, in the leaflet Beograd this week which is distributed at the Touristic Information Center , plus the museum and monument symbols on the city maps . However, even these listings have a very low reliability, not to speak of the guide books referring to the ``good old times''. The list which follows has been compiled in August 1997, and all the information (e.g. on opening times) has been checked on the signs on the entrance doors (which does not necessarily mean it is accurate).
I am also giving a touristic rating, with plus and minus signs; I apologize for the very subjective nature of these ratings, but I believe they are anyway an useful indication of both how interesting and how easy to understand are the items on display. These ratings have to be interpreted taking into account that I do not speak a single word of Serb; thus I have been very sensitive to the existence of captions and illustrative material in some foreign language. (++) means to be seen; (+) interesting; (-) do not waste your time; there are no ratings for the museums I have not visited, but for which I am only giving address and/or opening times.