The bridge that was rebuilt from the river — Ottoman bazaars, Bosnian coffee ceremony, and cevapi in the old city below the arch
Mostar is the cultural capital of Herzegovina and home to the Stari Most — the Old Bridge, a single white limestone arch over the Neretva river that is the most powerful symbol of post-war reconciliation in the Balkans. Built by the Ottoman architect Mimar Hayruddin in 1566, destroyed by Croatian forces in 1993, and rebuilt stone by stone from river-recovered pieces and new quarried Tenelija limestone that opened in 2004. The city divides between the Ottoman-era Stari Grad (Old Town) on the east bank — cobblestone streets, copper workshops, traditional bazaar stalls, and Ottoman mosques — and…
Mostar takes its name from the mostari — the bridge-keepers who maintained the 1566 Ottoman bridge. The city was a prosperous trading post on the route between the Ottoman Empire and the Adriatic coast, and the Stari Most was the longest single-arch stone bridge in the world when it was built. The Austro-Hungarian period (1878–1918) added the Catholic Franciscan community, the Orthodox Serbian community, and an architectural layer that still visible in the neoclassical administrative buildings on the west bank. On 9 November 1993, Croatian Defense Council (HVO) forces deliberately shelled the…