Nikola Tesla Museum, Belgrade (must see)

The Nikola Tesla Museum is a science museum and the final resting place of Nikola Tesla. The facility is dedicated to Tesla's life and work. It contains more than 160,000 original documents, 1,200 technical exhibits, 2,500 photos or drawings, and over 2,000 books or journals.

The building is a 1927 villa. The museum was founded in 1952, and exhibitions began in 1955.

Nikola Tesla was an inventor and engineer who lived from 1856 to 1943. He was Serbian, born in the village of Smiljan. He studied in Austria and audited classes at Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. His first jobs were for a telegraph company in Budapest and the Continental Edison Company in Paris later on.

He emigrated to the United States in 1884 to work for Edison Machine Works in New York. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1891. He broke with Edison and founded his own series of ventures, eventually filing over 300 patents. He is remembered most for his work on alternating-current motors and power transmitting equipment licensed to Westinghouse.

Tesla died in 1943 in New York City. His remains are interred at the museum in his favorite geometric shape--a gilded spherical urn.

English and other language tours are given hourly, and interactive demonstrations of his inventions follow each tour. One important note--the museum only accepts cash for ticket sales.