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Belgrade (/ˈbɛlɡreɪd/ BEL-grayd; Serbian: Beograd / Београд, lit. 'White City', pronounced [beǒɡrad] (About this soundlisten); names in other languages) is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula.[7] The urban area of Belgrade has a population of 1.23 million, while nearly 1.7 million people live within the administrative limits of the City of Belgrade (which encompasses almost all of its metropolitan area), a quarter of the total population of Serbia.[4] One of the most important prehistoric cultures of Europe, the Vinča culture, evolved within the Belgrade area in the 6th millennium BC. In antiquity, Thraco-Dacians inhabited the region and, after 279 BC, Celts settled the city, naming it Singidūn.[8] It was conquered by the Romans under the reign of Augustus and awarded Roman city rights in the mid-2nd century.[9] It was settled by the Slavs in the 520s, and changed hands several times between the Byzantine Empire, the Frankish Empire, the Bulgarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Hungary before it became the seat of the Serbian king Stefan Dragutin in 1284. In 1521, Belgrade was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and became the seat of the Sanjak of Smederevo.[10] It frequently passed from Ottoman to Habsburg rule, which saw the destruction of most of the city during the Austro-Ottoman wars. Belgrade was again named the capital of Serbia in 1841. Northern Belgrade remained the southernmost Habsburg post until 1918, when it was attached to the city, due to former Austro-Hungarian territories becoming the part of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes after World War I. In a fatally strategic position, the city has been battled over in 115 wars and razed 44 times.[11] Belgrade was the capital of Yugoslavia from its creation in 1918 to its dissolution in 2006. Being Serbia's primate city, Belgrade has special administrative status within