Mostar is probably the most iconic image of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the heart of its old town, the Stari Most (the Old Bridge) leaps across the Neretva River in a perfect arch of white stone, with a medieval tower at each end and turquoise water rushing below. The Ottomans built it in 1566. It was destroyed during the war in 1993 and rebuilt stone by stone, reopening in 2004. Today the bridge is a World Heritage Site and a universal symbol of beauty, tragedy and reconciliation all at once.
Around the bridge spreads a lovely Ottoman old town. There's the Kujundžiluk bazaar, with its copper workshops, carpet shops and Herzegovinian eateries, along with mosques with slender minarets, the Crooked Bridge (the Stari Most's little brother) and cobbled lanes running down to the river. And then there's Mostar's signature spectacle: the divers, young men who throw themselves from the top of the bridge, more than twenty metres up, into the icy waters of the Neretva, a tradition that goes back centuries.
But Mostar is also a city marked by the war of the 1990s, when it was divided and suffered brutal destruction, including the fall of the bridge itself. Bullet-riddled façades, ruined buildings and a huge cross on the hill sit alongside the restored beauty of the old town. This guide explores Mostar with a practical and respectful eye. It covers the bridge and the divers, the bazaar, the best viewpoints and the memory of the conflict, handled soberly, plus day trips into the dazzling Herzegovina of Blagaj, Počitelj and Kravice.
I came on a day trip from Dubrovnik in 2023. Hearing the call to prayer for the first time struck me, and I learned the Old Bridge did not fall in the Second World War but in 1993.
Read my full story →Mostar began as a crossing on the Neretva River. Its name comes from the 'mostari', the keepers of the wooden suspension bridge that linked the two banks at this strategic point as far back as the Middle Ages. After the Ottoman conquest in the 15th century the village grew, and in 1566 Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent ordered the old bridge replaced with a stone one. The result was the Stari Most, designed by the architect Mimar Hayruddin, a pupil of the great Sinan. Its daring arch amazed Europe and gave the city its name and its soul. Under the Ottomans, Mostar flourished as a prosperous city of mosques, bazaars and stone houses and became the capital of Herzegovina, where Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Jews lived side by side. It then passed to Austro-Hungarian rule (1878) and later to Yugoslavia. During the war of the 1990s the city was divided and devastated, and on 9 November 1993 the Stari Most was destroyed by artillery fire, a devastating symbolic blow. Rebuilt using the original technique and stones, the bridge reopened in 2004, and UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 2005. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The rocky, Mediterranean south of the country: Herzegovina, home of Mostar's Stari Most, the turquoise Neretva river, dervishes, vineyards and pilgrimages.
Read the history of Herzegovina (Mostar, Blagaj, Trebinje) →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. There are not many in Mostar, but the ones there are worth it. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Tap the cards below and have a look.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Mostar was born of a very simple need: crossing the river. The Neretva, rushing down from the mountains towards the Adriatic, cuts the valley in two at this point, and since the Middle Ages there has been a crossing here, first a ford and then a wooden suspension bridge held up by chains. That bridge gave the place its name and its purpose: the people who guarded it and collected the toll were the 'mostari', the guardians of the bridge (from 'most', bridge in the South Slavic languages). The city's name, Mostar, comes from them.
In the Middle Ages, the region of Herzegovina, whose name comes from the title of 'herceg' (duke) held by the nobleman Stjepan Vukčić Kosača in the 15th century, belonged to the lands of local lords. It sat on the border between the kingdom of Bosnia and the lands that looked towards the Adriatic and the powerful republic of Dubrovnik (Ragusa). Trade between the coast and the interior passed through these valleys, and the Neretva crossing was a strategic point.
The first settlement around the bridge was still modest: a few houses, a tower to watch over the crossing and not much else. But the location was excellent, and when a new power took the region, the Ottoman Empire, that humble crossing was set to become one of the most beautiful cities in the Balkans.
The Ottoman Empire conquered Herzegovina in the second half of the 15th century, and under its rule Mostar grew quickly as an administrative and trading centre. The old wooden suspension bridge, which swayed dangerously over the Neretva, was less and less up to the job. So Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent ordered a stone bridge built in its place, one worthy of the Empire's prestige.
The work was given to Mimar Hayruddin, an architect from the school of the famous Sinan, the great Ottoman master. The bridge was finished in 1566 and was an astonishingly bold piece of engineering for its time: a single stone arch spanning almost 30 metres with no intermediate supports, rising about 20 metres above the water, with two defensive towers, the Tara and the Halebija, at either end. Tradition says that building such a daring arch was so risky that the architect feared for his life if it failed. According to the legend, he prepared his own funeral on the day the scaffolding came down. The bridge held, and it would stand for more than four centuries.
The Stari Most instantly became Mostar's pride and a marvel admired by travellers from all over Europe. Its perfect outline above the turquoise Neretva became the symbol of the city, and Mostar itself grew and prospered around it, taking its deepest identity from the bridge.
During the Ottoman centuries, Mostar flourished as the main city of Herzegovina. A rich old town grew up around the bridge, with mosques (the Karađozbeg, the Koski Mehmed-paša and many others), bazaars such as Kujundžiluk (the coppersmiths' street), hans (inns), hammams (baths), fountains and stone houses with courtyards and balconies overlooking the river. The city stood at a crossroads of trade routes between the Adriatic and the Balkan interior, and Muslims, Orthodox Christians, Catholics and a Sephardic Jewish community lived side by side there.
Ottoman Mostar developed a refined urban culture, with its tradition of diving into the river from the bridge (a test of courage for young men that already existed back then), its coppersmiths and its bazaar life. The pale stone architecture, the slender minarets and the little cobbled streets gave the city the look that we still admire today, much of it restored.
In 1878, after the Congress of Berlin, Herzegovina came under the administration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which governed the region until 1918. The Austrians modernised Mostar with new buildings, schools, the railway and Central European architecture that joined the Ottoman one. After the First World War, the city became part of the kingdom that would become Yugoslavia, and later of Tito's socialist Yugoslavia, within the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, going through decades of growth and coexistence between its communities.
The break-up of Yugoslavia brought Mostar one of the most tragic chapters in its history. When the Bosnian War broke out in 1992, the city first suffered fighting against Serb forces and then, from 1993, a violent conflict between two sides that had until then been allies: the Bosniak (Muslim) and Croat forces. Mostar was split in two by a front line running along the Boulevard and the bank of the Neretva. The east bank, mostly Bosniak, was besieged and shelled, and the west bank was mostly Croat. This text covers those events soberly and refers readers to the historical and legal literature for the details.
The city was devastated: whole neighbourhoods razed, civilians under fire and communities torn apart by the hatred of war. The symbol of that destruction was the fall of the Stari Most. On 9 November 1993, after days of shelling, the bridge that had stood for more than four centuries collapsed into the Neretva under artillery fire from Croat forces. The image of the arch falling into the river went around the world. It was not just a monument but the very symbol of coexistence between the two banks, and its destruction was seen as a deliberate attempt to erase the city's shared memory.
The war ended in 1995 with the Dayton Agreement, but it left Mostar in ruins and deeply divided, with wounds that would take a long time to heal. Those responsible for crimes committed in that period were later tried by international courts. Rebuilding the city, and above all its bridge, became a task loaded with symbolism.
After the war, rebuilding the Stari Most became an international project, coordinated with help from UNESCO, the World Bank and several countries. The decision was to rebuild it exactly as it had been: with the same Ottoman technique, the same local stone (tenelija) and, wherever possible, the original bridge's own stones recovered from the riverbed. Divers brought up the fallen blocks, and stonemasons used traditional methods to give the arch back its exact shape.
The new Stari Most, faithful to the 1566 original, opened on 23 July 2004 in a moving ceremony. In 2005 UNESCO declared the Old Bridge and the old town of Mostar a World Heritage Site, highlighting its value as a symbol of reconciliation and of coexistence between cultures. The divers went back to leaping from the top, picking up a centuries-old tradition, and the city got back its most iconic image.
Mostar today lives a bittersweet reality. On the one hand, it is one of the great tourist destinations of the Balkans: the rebuilt bridge, the bazaar, the mosques and trips into stunning Herzegovina draw crowds. On the other, the city still carries the divisions of the war, with communities that largely live apart and a complicated post-war political situation, and the scars on many façades are a reminder of what happened. Symbolic gestures, such as the Bruce Lee statue put up in 2005 as an idol shared by everyone, speak of a wish for reconciliation. Mostar, with its fallen and reborn bridge, is now a place where beauty, memory and hope live side by side on the banks of the Neretva.
