Sarajevo

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

A low-angle view of the wooden Sebilj fountain in Baščaršija at golden hour, framed by market stalls and stone buildings.

Sarajevo joins an Ottoman bazaar, Austro-Hungarian streets and several living faiths along a river in the mountains.

The place

Sarajevo sits in a narrow valley of the Dinaric Alps, along the Miljacka River, at 527 metres in the middle of the Balkans. It is the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, home to 275,524 people inside the city limits, and the place where government, business and much of the country's press and art life concentrate. The slopes press in on both sides, so the city is a long strip: bazaar streets at the core, later avenues to the west, and houses climbing toward the ridges.

The modern town took shape in 1461 as an Ottoman stronghold after the empire moved into this part of Europe. What lasted is a pattern of daily life as much as any one building: small trades in a bazaar, mosque courtyards, and short stone bridges over the river. Later governments set broader streets and heavy public buildings beside that older pattern, so low wooden shopfronts and Central European blocks stand a short walk apart. A mosque, a Catholic cathedral, an Orthodox church and a synagogue share that same neighbourhood, which is why the city is sometimes compared with Jerusalem.

Fog gathers in the bowl in winter and can stall flights into the mountain-ringed airport. Even so, the old centre, the river and the lower slopes remain one compact piece of city. From the eastern hills the red roofs, the minarets and the pale line of the river read as one city.

Its story

Sarajevo's story starts well before the named city. At Ilidža, now an outer district, an Austro-Hungarian agricultural school was going up in 1893 when the works cut into a Neolithic settlement of the Butmir culture. Flint in the ground had held people there, and the pottery was distinct enough that a congress of archaeologists and anthropologists, held in the city in 1894, treated Butmir as its own culture. Illyrian communities followed. The town that continues into the present is later, and Ottoman.

The city was founded in 1461, as Ottoman authority settled into Bosnia and a commercial and garrison town grew in the valley. For centuries the place sat in the Ottoman Empire, until Austria-Hungary took administration in 1878 and made that rule formal in 1908. In 1918 it entered the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, and then the kingdom renamed Yugoslavia in 1929. From 1941 to 1945 it lay in the Independent State of Croatia; from 1945 to 1992 it was part of socialist Yugoslavia.

From 1992 to 1995 the capital belonged to the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the wartime state, and since then to today's Bosnia and Herzegovina. Each period built in the valley it found. Ottoman endowments left mosques, a bazaar and inns. Austria-Hungary left churches, civic buildings and wider streets. The Yugoslav years left housing on the slopes; a twisted tower for a media company followed in 2008. The old centre stayed in use beside those later layers, which is why a 17th-century clock tower still shares a street with much newer public buildings.

What to see

Culture

Sarajevo has kept several religious communities side by side for centuries, and that sharing is what the city's culture keeps returning to. Under Ottoman rule, Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics and Sephardi Jews lived here with their own institutions and a common set of streets. Austria-Hungary's shorter rule brought smaller numbers of Germans, Hungarians, Slovaks, Czechs and Ashkenazi Jews. A 1909 count put the population at about 50 per cent Muslim, 25 per cent Catholic, 15 per cent Orthodox and 10 per cent Jewish.

Writers and scholars sit in the same memory. The chemist Vladimir Prelog, a Nobel laureate, was from Sarajevo, as were the writer Zlatko Topčić and the poet Abdulah Sidran. Ivo Andrić, also a Nobel laureate, spent two years at school in the city. That history does not turn the centre into a museum. Books, theatre and argument still belong on the same streets as the bazaar.

Mosques, churches and the synagogue are ordinary neighbourhood buildings here. When you visit a mosque, cover your shoulders and knees, take off your shoes where slippers are set out, and ask before you photograph anyone at prayer.

What to wear

Sarajevo's clothing has long marked community and period rather than a single costume worn by everyone. In Ottoman times, urban Muslim women wore dimije, full gathered trousers, with a waistcoat and a head covering outdoors; men of standing added a fez and a long coat over a decorated vest. Catholic and Orthodox villages in the surrounding hills kept separate wool and linen clothes, often heavily embroidered, for feast days. Those garments now come out for weddings, folk performance and displays, not for the working week. Wool, linen and embroidered festive cloth are the textiles to look for, along with the cotton and silk once cut by bazaar tailors.

Weekday Sarajevo dresses like other cities of southern Europe: coats and knitwear for much of the year, lighter shirts when the valley warms, and shoes that can take cobbles. Covered and uncovered hair are both ordinary, and the choice is personal. Evenings in the old-town cafes are a little smarter; the paths on the slopes are dressed for walking.

A visitor needs layers, something waterproof in the cooler months, and footwear for polished stone and steep lanes. At a mosque, shoulders and knees should be covered, women should bring a scarf, and shoes come off at the door.

What to eat

Plan it

Best time. Winter is the awkward season in Sarajevo: fog settles in the valley and often delays flights at the mountain-ringed airport. Late spring and early autumn are the easier months to walk the bazaar and the lower slopes, at 527 metres, without that arrival gamble. For current events, check the city site at https://www.sarajevo.ba/.

How long. 3–4

Getting there. Sarajevo's airport is the main passenger gateway to Bosnia and Herzegovina, set among mountains where winter fog commonly holds flights. The busiest links named for it run via Frankfurt, Vienna, Istanbul, Dubai and Doha, and via Belgrade and Zagreb. The last leg into town is by road; a trolleybus route also serves the airport area and continues toward the east bus station. Check the city website for the current transfer rather than trusting a fixed timetable.

Budget. mid

Tips

Etiquette

Nearby

Sources