 Originally, complex was built as the modern neighborhood of Sajmište in Novi Beograd, across the Sava, and opened on 11 November 1937.As it was turned into the Sajmište concentration camp during the World War II, it was not reconstructed after 1945.City government selected three possible locations for the new fair and in 1953 the location of Šest Topola ("Six Poplars"), a former beach on the right Sava bank was chosen, in the westernmost extension of the neighborhood of Bara Venecija.