Culture
Main articles: Serbian culture and Cultural Heritage of SerbiaFor centuries straddling the boundaries between East and West, Serbia had been divided among: the Eastern and Western halves of the Roman Empire; then between Kingdom of Hungary, Bulgarian Empire, Frankish Kingdom and Byzantium; and then between the Ottoman Empire and the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary, as well as Venice in the south. These overlapping influences have resulted in cultural varieties throughout Serbia and the Serbian-inhabited regions; its north leaning to the profile of Central Europe, while the south being characteristic of the wider Balkans and the Mediterranean.
The Byzantine influence on Serbia was profound, firstly through the introduction of Eastern Christianity (Orthodoxy) in the Early Middle Ages. The Serbian Orthodox Church has had an enduring status in Serbia, with the many Serbian monasteries constituting the most valuable cultural monuments left from Serbia in the Middle Ages.
Serbia has a total of eight sites on the UNESCO World Heritage list: The Early Medieval capital Stari Ras and the 13th-century monastery Sopoćani, and the 12th-century monastery Studenica, and the endangered Medieval Monuments in Kosovo group, comprising the monasteries of Visoki Dečani, Our Lady of Ljeviš, Gračanica and Patriarchate of Peć (former seat of the Serbian Church, mausoleum of Serbian royalty) and finally the Roman estate of Gamzigrad–Felix Romuliana. There are two literary memorials on UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme: The 12th-century Miroslav Gospel, and scientist Nikola Tesla's valuable archive.
Serbia has a well-established theatrical tradition with many theaters. The Serbian National Theatre was established in 1861. The Belgrade International Theatre Festival, founded in 1967, is one of the oldest theatre festivals in the world, and it has become one of the five most important and biggest European festivals. The Serbian cinema is one of the oldest in the Balkans, having its foundation in 1896 with the release of the oldest movie in the Balkans, "Život i dela besmrtnog vožda Karađorđa", a biography about Karađorđe.
The most prominent museum in Serbia is the National Museum of Serbia, founded in 1844; it houses a collection of more than 400,000 exhibits, over 5,600 paintings and 8,400 drawings and prints, and includes many foreign masterpiece collections, including Miroslav Gospel. The museum is currently undergoing renovation.
The official language, Serbian, is written in both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.”
—Stephen Vizinczey (b. 1933)
“The white dominant culture seemed to think that once the Indians were off the reservations, they’d eventually become like everybody else. But they aren’t like everybody else. When the Indianness is drummed out of them, they are turned into hopeless drunks on skid row.”
—Elizabeth Morris (b. c. 1933)