A traveller making his way through modern Serbia is impressed above all by the countless signs of its long and varied past. Present-day Serbia answers roughly to the ancient provinces of Moesia prima, Dacia mediterranea, and Dardania. During the great migrations in Europe (5th to 6th century) Serbian ancestors allegedly arrive to the Balkan Peninsula from several directions and settle in the wide area between four seas (Black, Adriatic, Aegean, and Ionian). It is on this location that the eldest Serbian feudal states Raška /Raschka, Rascia, Rassa /, later Serbia and Duklja, later Zeta or Montenegro, were formed that unified neighboring Serbian tribes into the main Medieval Serbian state in the Balkans where Eastern Orthodox Christianity was accepted in the 9th century. Stefan Nemanja - Stephen Nemanya, whom the Byzantine emperor recognized as grand zhupan of Serbia in 1159, founded Nemanyic Dynasty that ruled for two centuries. His son and successor assumed the title king of all Serbia in 1217 with the pope's blessing. However, the king's brother, Sava, the first archbishop of Serbia, succeeded in having papal influence eliminated from the kingdom; in 1219 he won recognition from the patriarch of Constantinople of an autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church. The Serbian kingdom was at first overshadowed by the rapid rise of the Bulgarian empire under Ivan II (Ivan Asen), but under King Stephen Dušan, who became king in 1331 and Tsar in 1346, Serbia of Nemanya Dynasty became the most powerful empire in the Balkan Peninsula, much of which it absorbed.

Even among European states, Serbia was noted for its high economic, social, and cultural level. After Stephen's death in 1355, however, the empire decayed and fell victim to the onslaught of the Ottoman Turks. The Serbs suffered defeat at the Maritsa River in 1371; that same year the last tsar, Stephen Urosh V, died without male issue. His successor, Lazar, contented himself with the title Prince of Serbia. Prince Lazar was slain in 1389 during the Battle of Kosovo Field in which the cream of Serbian nobility was massacred and the fate of independent Serbia sealed when the Serbian hero Lazar lost his kingdom to the Ottoman Turks, so Kosovo for Serbs, retains its symbolic significance. Prince Lazar's son, Stephen Lazarevic, was allowed to rule (1389–1427) over a diminished and divided Serbia by Sultan Beyazid I, to whom he paid tribute. Although Despot Stefan Lazarevic and his successor, George Brankovich (reigned 1427–56), received the title despots /lords/ from the Byzantine Empire, the Turks gradually absorbed their lands. The quarrel over the Brankovich succession facilitated the complete annexation of Serbia by Sultan Muhammad II in 1459. Belgrade, then held by Hungary, fell to the Turks in 1521. During the centuries-long Turkish occupation of Serbia, national traditions and the memory of the Dušan's empire were preserved by the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Serbia became a Turkish province, with its pashas residing at Belgrade. Turkish rule in Serbia was oppressive while the the Serbian nobility was annihilated and Christian peasants were treated like virtual slaves. Many Serbs fled to Hungary and Austria from the southern part of the country persecuted by the Turks. Islam was in a period of expansion during this time, especially in Raška, Kosovo and Bosnia. Many Serbs and Croats converted to Islam, which eventually led to the forming of the Bosniak nation. The Ottoman period was a defining one in the history of the country; Slavic, Byzantine, Arabic and Turkish cultures suffused. Many contemporary cultural traits can be traced back to Ottoman period.

Occupation of Serbia lasted until the uprising against Turkish yoke in 1804, so in 1867. the last Turkish troops left Serbia. The constitution in 1869, granting more power to the Skupština /Parliament/ afer the Congress of Berlin, reestablised Serbia as a state which obtained formal independece in 1878. The strengthening of parliamentary government and expansion of the economy greatly raised Serbia's prestige and exerted a powerful attraction on the South Slavs who remained under Austro-Hungarian rule. Austria-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 was designed to quell sentiment in that region for union with Serbia. In 1912 Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia declared war on the waning Ottoman Empire and stripped it of most of its remaining European possessions. A second war on the Balkan Peninsula was fought in 1913, over boundaries. Bulgaria attacked Serbia and Greece, leading to an invasion and a partial dismemberment of Bulgaria by its former Balkan allies and Turkey.

Victorious in Balkan wars and World War I, Serbian army fought bravely, but in 1915, when Bulgaria joined the Central Powers and Germany reinforced the Austrians, Serbia was overrun. In World War I, Serbia had 1,264,000 casualties — 28% of its total population, and 58% of its male population. The Serbian troops and government were evacuated to Kérkira /Corfu/Krf, where in 1917 Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, and Montenegrin representatives proclaimed the union of South Slavs. In 1918 the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, headed by Peter I of Serbia, officially came into existence.

During World War II, Serbia was a German-occupied puppet state that included present-day Central Serbia and Banat, popularly called Nedić's Serbia. However, parts of the present-day territory of Serbia were occupied by Hitler collaboratory Croatian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Albanian, and Italian armies. The occupying powers committed numerous crimes against the civilian population, especially against Serbs and Jews.

From 1945 Serbia was one of the six consistuent units of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Known as Tito's Yugoslavia, led by the Yugoslav Communist Government until 1992, it consisted of united socialist Republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia.

In 1986, Slobodan Milošević became leader of the Serbian Communist party. In year of 1991 civil war was unsucessfuly prevented. Despite the civil wars in neighbouring Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the United Nations imposed economic sanctions on Yugoslavia, which were eased in September 1994, after Serbia announced it was cutting off aid to the Bosnian Serbs, and in late 1995 in Dayton USA, Presidents of Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia signed a peace.

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) remained peaceful until 1998, when the clashes with contraversal K.L.A. started in Kosovo province. The desire of major of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo for independence or for union with Albania resulted in terorrism and bloody war. Beginning in 1989, Milošević ended Kosovo's autonomy, which Tito fronteered and granted in the 1974 constitution, and sent in troops to suppress the protests of Kosovo's Albanian majority.

Between 1998 and 1999, continued clashes in Kosovo between Yugoslav security forces and the K.L.A. prompted a NATO aerial bombardment to Yugoslav military and civil targets which lasted for 78 days. The NATO attacks were stopped when Serbian president Slobodan Milošević agreed to remove all security forces, including the military and the police, and have them replaced by a body of international police, in return for which Kosovo would formally remain within the Yugoslav Federation.

From 1992 until the 2003, Serbia, together with Montenegro, was part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) won early parliamentary elections held (December 2000) after Milošević lost the Yugoslavian presidency to Vojislav Koštunica, and formed the first noncommunist, nonsocialist government in Serbia in 55 years. Zoran Djindjić became the prime minister of Serbian Government. The DOS pledged to create a market economy and to dismantle the authoritarian state Milošević had established, and subsequently /2001/ turned the former president over to the UN war crimes tribunal at the Hague. Relations between Djindjić and Yugoslavian president Koštunica became increasingly strained, with the prime minister more concerned about improving the economy and relations with Western Europe than preserving the Yugoslavian federation. Djindjić was assassinated on March 12. 2003, and Serbian officials accused a criminal gang of responsibilty. The assassination resulted in extensive arrests of governmental, security, and criminal figures associated with organized crime and the former Milošević regime.

From 2003 to 2006, Serbia was part of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, into which the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had been transformed.

On March the 17th 2004 Kosovo erupted in anti-Serb violence that appeared designed to exlude Serb population from mixed urban and edged rural areas. Enormous number of Serbian and World cultural heritage monuments were devastated. Koštunica called, as he had before, for the partition of province into Albanian and Serb cantons. The United Nations and Albanians from Kosovo rejected that solution, but Serbia remains opposed to complete independece for Kosovo, and the ultimate status of Kosovo is unresolved .

The current President of Serbia is Boris Tadić, a pro-Western reformer and the leader of the Democratic Party (DS). He was elected with 53% of the vote in the second round of the Serbian presidential election held on 27 June 2004, following several unsuccessful elections since 2002.

On May 21, 2006, Montenegro held a referendum to determine whether or not to end the union with Serbia. The next day, state-certified results showed 55.5% of voters in favor of independence, which was just above the 55% required by the referendum. On June the 3rd, the Parliament of Montenegro declared Montenegro independent of the State Union and on June the 5th, the National Assembly of Serbia declared Serbia the successor to the State Union as Republic of Serbia.

The Serbian Parliament adopted the new Constitution of Serbia in a solemn session on November 8, 2006 in the House of Parliament in Belgrade. The Constitution of Serbia comes into force on the day of its proclamation. For the first time a Serbian constitution was proclaimed in the representative Parliament edifice at the Nikola Pašić Square, where all constitutions of the former Yugoslavia were proclaimed.

Thanks to its long and eventful history, Serbia offers numerous amazing and exciting sights to be explored.