Tašmajdan cave and swim

Tašmajdan is a popular park and hill in Belgrade, Serbia. Besides the park, it hosts a stadium and free-for-entry swimming pool. But underneath the park are gems, caves, bunkers, and history. Sadly, none of that is accessible, part of the caves are filled with construction rubble from the stadium, some are closed due to danger of German ammunition from WWII, and the rest is just closed. It is a shame, obviously something like this could be a very interesting tourist destination in any city.

The Tašmajdan hill is an ancient reef.

The underground caves have hosted Roman quarries, citizens' hiding places, cemetaries, military arsenals and warehouses, ice factory, dumping grounds from the construction of the stadium, tours for the tourists, and rave parties. They were also extended by Germans during the war. According to Wikipedia, the caves were the headquarters of Alexander Löhr, head of the German Air forces in Serbia, and colloquially called "Löhr’s cave". The constructed bunkers were massive, with large metal doors, truck entrances and fully prepared to support thousand soldiers for months.

While gawking at the closed cave entrances for a while, I considering climbing the fence and seeing if there's an actual access regardless of the dead and dusty appearance of the place. But in the end I didn't, maybe good...

Then I run into the swimming facilities on the other side of the stadium. Entry was free, and I had my swimming pants with me so ... went in. It was indeed free, but also quite full of people in the summer's heat. The facilities are very basic, but there's a free bag check which helped a lot for the practical arrangements. There's a cafeteria... and maybe showers... but I didn't find them. The pool is big, 50 x 20 meters. There's also an indoor pool, both are part of the Sports Center Tašmajdan, like the stadium as well. The stadium was built in 1954.

More information from Wikipedia, Miocenski Sprud, Show Caves, and Grokipedia. The cave entrance is a at N 44.81053 E 20.47067. The sports center page is here, Wikipedia article here, and they are at N 44.80948 E 20.47256. The stadium is also part of the sports center, and is between the cave and the pools. The park is above all three in the southwest direction.

Cave entrance:

Stadium:

Swimming facilities, the entrance to the outdoor pool and the indoor pool and sports complex building:

This article has also been published at Planetcaver.net here. Read the full series of cave articles at planetcaver.net, sauna and swimming stories from planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved. No photos of swimmers or sauna goers are taken in these articles. The pool photo is from Wikipedia, CC BY SA 4.0 and by Andrija12345678.