[6] Before the erection of the building of the National Museum on this place was a famous tavern called "Dardanelles", meeting point of the cultural and artistic elite of the time.

The building which housed the most important museum of the Republic of Serbia today originally was built from 1902 to 1903, for the purpose of the Uprava Fondova, the oldest financial institution in Belgrade.

The building was constructed according to the design of architects Andra Stevanović and Nikola Nestorović after a competition on which they received the first prize.

Almost three decades later, the increased development of the State Mortgage Bank of Yugoslavia (Serbian: Državna hipotekarna banka), the successor entity to Uprava Fondova, generated a need for a reconstruction of the building.

The extension was made without competition by architect Vojin Petrović, who designed the added wing and atrium facing the street Laze Paču.

During World War II Mortgage Bank building was bombed and the central part with the dome was destroyed.

Von Reiswitz inspected the museum, noting that 100,000 exhibits are preserved, except for some items which went missing in the initial stage of the war: some one hundred coins, eight archaeological artefacts, and two paintings "without greater value".

For that purpose, the museum was transferred into a building of the former Stock Exchange on Student Square, and partly to the Palace of Princess Ljubica.

In 2003, the permanent exhibition was dismantled and the building was closed for the impending reconstruction, but the process dragged on for years, including the gaps when nothing was done at all, and by January 2018 the museum was still not open.

In the atrium of the building, there are vaults, left from the period when the venue served as a bank, which will be adapted into the exhibition depots.

The look of the vault will be preserved and will serve for the presentation of the museum numismatic collection, from the beginning of the coin minting to the 20th century.

[10] The grand re-opening ceremony included projections on the building's facade, as well as a promotional video featuring famous Ukrainian ballet dancer Sergei Polunin.

[11] The National Museum of Serbia is a representative public building, monumental in size and volume, as well as its external shape and style.

The collection also contains unique items: a golden medallion of Emperor Valentinian I, minted 364 AD, silver Dinars from the reign of King Stefan Radoslav of Serbia, and others.

[16] The museum includes Serbian medieval, French, Dutch, Flemish, Italian, Russian, German, Japanese, Chinese (from 1644 to 1978), English, Spanish, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Yugoslav and miscellaneous art collections.

Erih Šlomović, a young Belgrader born at the turn of the 20th century, became in his youth the protégé of the world's biggest art merchant, Ambroise Vollard.

They include works by Domenico Veneziano, Giovanni di Paolo, Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, Domenico Robusti, Vittore Carpaccio, Lorenzo di Credi, Guido Reni, Spinello Aretino, Francesco Bassano the Younger, Leandro Bassano, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Giulio Carpioni, Andrea Celesti, Biagio Faggioni etc.

The graphic and etching collection includes work by Botticelli, Annibale Carracci, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Paolo Veronese, Amedeo Modigliani, Luigi Ontani, Guglielmo Achille Cavellini, Giuseppe Pinot-Gallizio, and others.

Highlights in the museum include: The Dutch and Flemish collection consists of more than 500 works (210 paintings of art and 220 graphics and engravings, and over 80 drawings).

Among the French painters represented in the collection are Nicolas Tournier, Robert Tournières, Hubert Robert, Gauguin, Renoir, Lautrec, Matisse, Monet, Cézanne, Degas, Corot, Paul Signac, Maurice Utrillo, Rodin, Georges Rouault, Pierre Bonnard, Pissarro, Redon, Gustave Moreau, Honoré Daumier, Eugène Carrière, Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain, Suzanne Valadon, Forain, Robert Delaunay, Rosa Bonheur, Marie Laurencin, Félix Ziem.

Some of the museum French Highlights are: The Russian art collection has 90 paintings, and numerous prints, etchings and was mostly donated by Prince Paul of Yugoslavia.

The collection includes work by painters and sculptors such as Ivan Aivazovsky, Marc Chagall, Kandinsky, Roerich, Repin, Filipp Malyavin, Alexei Harlamov, Mikhail Larionov, Boris Grigoriev, Vladimir Borovikovsky, Pavel Kuznetsov, Konstantin Korovin, Kazimir Malevich, Alexandre Benois, El Lissitzky, Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Alexander Nikolayevich Samokhvalov, Pyotr Nilus etc.

They include painters such as Alfred Sisley, Charles Conder, Philip Wilson Steer, Walter Sickert, Hermione Hammond, James Bolivar Manson, Wyndham Lewis, Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Rowland Fisher,[27] and graphic works from William Hogarth.

Some of the works are: Other Art Collection in National Museum in Belgrade include works from Spain, USA, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Australia, China, Canada etc..Collections include paintings from El Greco, Picasso, Mary Cassatt, Burne Hogarth, Felix Philipp Kanitz, László Moholy-Nagy, Eduardo Arroyo, Erró, Sol LeWitt etc.

Some of the artists represented are: Marina Abramović, Milovan Destil Marković, Paja Jovanović, Stojan Aralica, Petar Lubarda, Milan Konjović, Uroš Predić, Đura Jakšić, Marko Murat, Đorđe Andrejević Kun, Nadežda Petrović, Petar Dobrović, Mića Popović and Sava Šumanović.