Ivo Andrić's bridge town — the Ottoman stone arc above the Drina that won a Nobel Prize
Višegrad is a small town in Republika Srpska on the Drina river, site of the extraordinary 16th-century Stari Most (the Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge), a UNESCO World Heritage Site — an 11-arch stone bridge 179 metres long built between 1571 and 1577 by the Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan. The bridge was the inspiration and setting for Ivo Andrić's Nobel Prize-winning novel The Bridge on the Drina (1945), which traces 400 years of Bosnian history through the lives of people who lived and died beside it. The surrounding Drina Canyon is wild and dramatic.
The Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge was commissioned by Grand Vizier Mehmed Paša Sokolović, who was born in the village of Sokolovići near Višegrad — he rose from a Bosnian Serb village to become one of the most powerful administrators of the Ottoman Empire under three sultans. Mimar Sinan (the architect of the Süleymaniye Mosque and Topkapi Palace) designed the bridge using techniques developed for his Istanbul structures, creating a bridge so elegantly proportioned and structurally sound that it has survived floods, wars, and three centuries of heavy use. The Nobel Prize awarded to Ivo Andrić…