During the
Austrian occupation of northern Serbia from 1717 to 1739, they conducted extensive project of rebuilding Belgrade, turning the city into Westernized European,
baroque-style town. This period is today referred to as the Baroque Belgrade. The governor in this period,
Charles Alexander, Duke of Württemberg, ordered the construction of
Württemberg Palace, a massive building used as his seat, which was located at the modern
Republic Square area. There, he formed something of the first zoo in Belgrade. He ordered his soldiers to capture and bring to him "wild beasts from the forests and mountains of Serbia", which were then kept in cages. The Austrians withdrew in 1739 and the
Ottomans demolished the building in 1743. The Belgrade's first
general urban plan, which was adopted in 1924, envisioned construction of the zoo in
Topčider, at the time on the outskirts of the city. The present Belgrade Zoological Garden was officially opened on 12 July 1936 by the mayor of Belgrade,
Vlada Ilić. The zoo was initially no larger than , but was eventually expanded to about 14 hectares. It quickly became one of the most popular places with the locals and even with the members of the
Karađorđević dynasty, who were regulars at the zoo. In the beginning, animals were acquired through personal donations. First group of animals was purchased by mayor Ilić himself while the first manager, Aleksandar Krstić, purchased the first hippopotamus in 1937 to celebrate the birth of his son. During the
Second World War, the zoo was
bombed twice, by the
Nazis in 1941 and by the
Allies in 1944, heavily damaging the infrastructure and killing most of the animals. The zoo also lost seven hectares of land. The 1941 bombing of the zoo was described in
Winston Churchill's
The Second World War and
Emir Kusturica's 1995 film
Underground. Miodrag Savković, manager of the zoo during the World War II occupation, was arrested right away by the new Communist authorities, and shot, even though the charges against him nor his resting place are known. The government, under the pressure of real estate groups also unsuccessfully tried to appropriate the space to build luxurious hotels, casinos and nightclubs. There were also ideas to relocate the zoo to the
Great War Island, or to the western city outskirts, in
Surčin. In 2022, new city administration headed by mayor
Aleksandar Šapić again included relocation of the zoo in the city's urban plan. In February 2023, Šapić announced relocation to the
Ada Safari section of
Ada Ciganlija island. In turn, this would include relocation of 273 families who live in the area, in the
Partizan settlement. The relocation will last for several years. City manager, Miroslav Čučković, explained the relocation: "Since the foundation of the new city administration...we made decisions which are connected to our dedication to spaces to which Belgraders were coming close to in all of these previous years. Those are spaces for which we think should have some new type of content and possibility to directly invest into them". Šapić added that the "political decision was made to handle this", and, if everything goes by the plan, the relocation might be finished in three years. The new zoo should double its size, from to . In order to ease the access to the zoo on an island, city will push the construction of the pedestrian bridge and revitalize the project of
gondola lift from
New Belgrade to
Košutnjak, via Ada. Šapić then back-pedaled a bit, stating that this is just a "political idea" which is not hastily made, that only now analyses and surveys will be done to check the viability, that nothing will be built instead of the zoo but the fortress will be
conserved, and that there is no set time frame for the project. However, residents from Partizan said that they were approached regarding their resettlement already in July 2022 but without any mentioning of the zoo to them, which they consider a proof that the relocation was an ad hoc idea. ==Animals and exhibits==