The city has around 1.4 million inhabitants. Including the surrounding area, the population is 1.7 million.
With its universities, colleges and scientific institutions, Belgrade is the educational centre and, with numerous publishing houses, radio and television stations as well as daily and monthly newspapers, it is also the dominant media centre in the country. Belgrade is the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the residence of the Serbian Patriarch. The largest Christian church on the Balkan Peninsula, the Cathedral of Saint Sava, is in Belgrade.
Due to Yugoslavia's rejection of Soviet hegemony and Stalinism and as a meeting place for the Non-Aligned Movement, Belgrade became an international political centre during the time of communist Yugoslavia. During the period of socialist Yugoslavia, Belgrade developed into a European metropolis. In the major urban development project Novi Beograd, which was to become the representative center of socialist Yugoslavia, aspects of increasing densification were combined with strong impulses for the economic and cultural dynamism of the city after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Sava Congress Center, built here between 1977 and 1979, is the largest congress center in all the Balkan countries, and the Štark Arena, built between 1991 and 2004, is one of the largest sports halls in the world. The Belgrade Waterfront urban renewal project, estimated to last 30 years on the demolished site of the old "Beograd" train station, brought the city its most profound change since the Second World War.
After the collapse of the Second Yugoslavia in 1991, Belgrade became the capital of the newly formed Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which led to political and social uncertainty in Serbia. This was evident in the unrest on March 9, 1991, and in mass demonstrations in 1996/1997. The late 1990s were marked by the suppression of civil protests and the suppression and liquidation of opposition politicians during the regime of Slobodan Milošević. War-related shortages and an economic embargo gave rise to a black market and war profiteering. This also led to a new economic class, the Serbian oligarchs, also known as the Taikune. The years of crisis culminated in the Kosovo War with Operation Allied Force, which began on March 24, 1999: NATO began its 78-day air raids against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which hit the inner city of Belgrade particularly hard. During the heaviest bombardment of the city in the night between May 7 and 8, the Chinese embassy was completely destroyed, among other things. This led to a serious crisis in the relationship between the major powers of the United States and the People's Republic of China, and NATO was forced to refrain from any further bombings in the inner city of Belgrade for the rest of the bombings.[92] In some places in the cityscape, war ruins can still be seen that have neither been demolished nor rebuilt.