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Published: August 9th 2010
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Stari Most
Stari Most in Mostar is a UNESCO World Heritage site "The bridge that was turned into ash and then rose like phoenix the bird"
When we were in Bosnia and Herzegovina we decided to make a stop in Mostar on our way down to Dubrovnik on the Adriatic Sea. Mostar is situated in Herzegovina and the city is known mostly for the bridge Stari Most in the Old Town of Mostar.
The bridge was built in the 16th century when Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans were Turks and their religion was Islam. The style they had the bridge built in is influenced by this.
Mostar has since long way back been inhabited by both Muslims and Croats. In fact the city has been quite clearly divided into a Muslim part on one side of the river and a Croatian part on the other side of the river. During the Bosnian War the Croat artillery hit Stari Most and destroyed it completely.
The destruction of Stari Most was, according to
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, a
deliberate action. The bridge is very steep and slippery and that makes it difficult to cross the bridge on foot on the best of days. To move an entire army across
Stari Most
The bridge was built in the 16th century when Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of the Ottoman Empire River Neretva using Stari Most is impossible. You can't get a tank or a car across the bridge. Heck, you can barely get bicycle across! So you don't have to be a four star general to understand that the military significance of Stari Most must have been minimal. Stari Most was built by the Ottomans and it is built in a style that has clear Turkish influences. Therefore the bridge could be seen as a symbol for the Muslims. Since the Croats were then fighting the Muslims it makes sense that by destroying the bridge you also destroy a piece of the Muslim identity. So the Croats shelled Stari Most for the only reason that it stood as a symbol for the enemy. Maybe that makes sense to the Croats but it doesn't to us.
We can here add that Stari Most today is a
world heritage site so it wasn't just any old bridge the Croats blew into smithereens back in November 1993.
When Ake was in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1997 he also visited Mostar. Back then the Stari Most was not much more than rubble. They were then slowly picking up the pieces of the bridge in
Stari Most 1997
During the Bosnian War the Croat artillery destroyed Stari Most. This is a photo taken of the bridge in 1997 order to reconstruct it. That was a work that was finished in 2004. Today the Stari Most once again stands there. How much of the bridge that is restored and how much that is rebuilt is something we would like to know because the bridge was badly destroyed and parts of it look pretty new.
Near the Stari Most is another, much smaller, bridge named Crooked Bridge. First we thought that it was some kind of joke for tourists because it looked just like Stari Most, only much smaller. On a sign we read that Crooked Bridge was built around the same time as Stari Most and that it might have been a kind of small scale test before they had the larger bridge built.
Just like in Sarajevo there is very little trace of the war left today. There are some ruins of houses around but other than that it looks like any other town really.
The day we spent in Mostar was the hottest we had on this vacation. Someone said that it was 39 degrees centigrade but we think it might have been even hotter.
On hot summer days people, mostly young men,
Stari Most 2010
This is what the bridge look like from more or less the same position as the previous photo dive from the bridge into the river. This is a tradition that goes back several hundred of years and was probably in the beginning a way to show off. Today the bridge divers have a club and the diving is done as a show for the tourists, as long as the tourists pay for it that is. We saw two divers who climbed onto the bridge and prepared for a jump. But when the tourists didn't pay them enough they climbed back down again.
When we left Bosnia and Herzegovina we felt that we would have liked to travel around more than we did. But we had already before we set off decided to primarily spend this vacation in Montenegro and Albania. We never intended to stay more than a few days in Bosnia and Herzegovina and that is what we did. But another time we hope we can rent a car and travel a lot more in this country because we both left with the feeling that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a wonderful country.
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