Mostar Bridge: Architecture, River Crossings and the Making of a Balkan City

Mostar takes its name from a bridge. The town grew up where travellers, soldiers and traders crossed the Neretva River, and the people who guarded that crossing, the mostari or bridge-keepers, gave the place its name. The Mostar bridge that stands there now, Stari Most or the Old Bridge, is a single stone arch first raised under the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent and rebuilt after its destruction in 1993. On our small group Balkans tour, Mostar is the first stop in Bosnia and Herzegovina: on Day 2 the group stops in the town to view the bridge and take a guided walk through its Ottoman and medieval quarters before continuing to Sarajevo.

Why the Mostar bridge matters on a Balkans route

It is tempting to treat Stari Most as a single striking image: a pale arch over green water. Its real interest lies in what it did. A permanent crossing over a fast mountain river turned a minor river settlement into a market town, fixed where its bazaar, mosques and houses would stand, and tied the coast to the interior. UNESCO’s description of the World Heritage property opens with exactly this geography: “The historic town of Mostar, spanning a deep valley of the Neretva River,” developed in the 15th and 16th centuries as an Ottoman frontier town, and again during the Austro-Hungarian period in the 19th and 20th centuries.

That makes Mostar a useful place to understand a theme that runs through the whole route. The Balkans are a land of mountain ranges cut by river valleys, and whoever controlled the crossings controlled trade, taxation and the movement of armies. Our article on how mountains and rivers shaped Balkan settlement and trade traces that pattern across the peninsula. In Mostar it is compressed into a single span of stone.

A river town between the mountains and the Adriatic

The Neretva runs south from the mountains of Herzegovina to the Adriatic, and its valley has long been one of the few practical routes between the coast and the Bosnian interior. ICOMOS, the advisory body that evaluated Mostar for the World Heritage List in 2005, records human settlement on the Neretva “between the Hum Hill and the Velez mountain since prehistory”, with fortified enclosures and cemeteries, and evidence of Roman occupation beneath the present town. Little is known of Mostar in the medieval period, ICOMOS notes, though Christian basilicas of late antiquity continued in use.

The town’s name enters the written record in the 15th century. Sources differ on the first date: Britannica gives 1452, while the ICOMOS evaluation cites a document of 1474. Both agree on the meaning. ICOMOS explains that the name came from the bridge-keepers, the mostari, and refers to a wooden bridge used by “soldiers, traders, and other travelers” to reach the market town on the left bank. At that time, ICOMOS adds, Mostar was the seat of a kadiluk, a district with a regional judge.

Trade made the crossing matter. Because the settlement lay on the route between the Adriatic and the mineral-rich regions of central Bosnia, ICOMOS records, it spread to the right bank of the river and became the leading town in the Sanjak of Herzegovina, an Ottoman administrative district. Britannica describes Mostar as “the chief city and, historically, the capital of Herzegovina”. A wooden bridge carried that traffic at first; by Britannica’s account, it swayed.

From timber to stone: building Stari Most

The stone bridge replaced the wooden one in the middle of the 16th century, during the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent. Britannica records that it was commissioned by Süleyman the Magnificent, begun in 1557 and completed in 1566, to replace “a swaying wooden suspension bridge”. Our guide to the Ottoman Empire and the building culture of Süleyman’s age sets that reign in context: it was the period of the chief architect Sinan, whose major works stand in Istanbul and Edirne.

Mostar’s bridge is linked to Sinan’s circle. UNESCO credits the design to “mimar Hajruddin”, working, it says, according to the design of his master-teacher, Sinan; Britannica likewise names Hayruddin as a student of Sinan. The ICOMOS evaluation is more cautious, describing Sinan “or one of his closest followers” as the designer. What the sources agree on is the result: a single, steeply rising arch with no pier in the river, springing from abutments on the rocky banks.

The figures vary slightly between sources, so they are worth giving with their origins. Britannica’s entry on Stari Most gives a span of 30 metres, a roadway 4 metres wide and a height of 24 metres above the river, with the arch itself rising 12 metres; its entry on Mostar gives the arch as 27 metres wide. Archnet, the architectural archive of the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, gives a span of 29 metres, a 4-metre roadway and a vault only 77 centimetres thick. It describes the stone as local tenelija, “a pale limestone known for its physical and chemical endurance”, with the blocks held together by iron clamps set in molten lead.

ICOMOS, writing after the post-war reconstruction, observed that war damage had made it possible to study the original construction methods in detail. Its recommended wording for criterion (iv) states that detailed scientific investigations had provided “proof of exceptionally high technical refinement, in the skill and quality of the ancient constructions, particularly of the Old Bridge”.

Towers, bazaar and mahalas: a city organised around a crossing

The bridge was never a stand-alone monument. ICOMOS records that the town was fortified between 1520 and 1566, the period in which the wooden bridge was replaced in stone (1557–1566, by Britannica’s dates). The Ottoman defences are represented by the Halebinovka and Tara towers, the watch-towers over the ends of the Old Bridge, along with a stretch of ramparts, while the Hercegusa Tower dates from the medieval period.

Around the towers the town took the shape it still shows. According to ICOMOS, the centre of the settlement was the bazaar, which extended along both banks of the river, “the two parts being articulated by the bridge”. From the bazaar ran the streets of the mahalas, the residential quarters. Water came from the Radobolja stream, which enters the Neretva on its right bank and fed small canals used for irrigation and for turning the wheels of water-mills. Britannica singles out the reconstructed coppersmiths’ bazaar among the town’s attractions.

ICOMOS describes the second half of the 16th century and the early decades of the 17th as “the most important period in the development of Mostar”. Mosques, a madrasah (an Islamic school) and a hammam (a public bath) were built, concentrated on the left bank in a religious complex, while private and commercial buildings filled the bazaar and the mahalas. Of the thirteen original mosques dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, ICOMOS records, seven were destroyed during the 20th century, for ideological reasons or by bombardment. Ottoman-period inns, fountains and schools survive too, along with low shops of wood or stone, stone storehouses and a group of former tanneries around an open courtyard. Later houses of the 18th and early 19th centuries, ICOMOS notes, show the features of Ottoman domestic architecture: a hall, an upper storey for living, a paved courtyard and a verandah on one or two storeys.

Mostar was also more than an Ottoman town. UNESCO’s statement of Outstanding Universal Value notes that mosques, churches and synagogues “existed side-by-side” in the city, and it describes Mostar as a symbol of the coexistence of communities from diverse cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. ICOMOS records two 19th-century Orthodox churches, one of which has since disappeared, and an early 20th-century synagogue that was severely damaged in the Second World War and later converted into a theatre.

How much walking does the Mostar stop involve?

The tour page describes a guided, educational walk through the Ottoman quarter of Mostar that also takes in the medieval quarter, after the group views the bridge, on Day 2. The tour as a whole is rated Level 2, Moderate: participants must be able to carry their own luggage, climb and descend stairs, and take part in 3 to 5 hours of physical activity a day, the equivalent of walking up to 8 kilometres on uneven ground. The tour page gives no separate figure for the Mostar walk, so if you would like to talk through this day, a Tour Specialist can go over it with you.

New bridges for a new empire: Austro-Hungarian Mostar

In the 19th century Mostar’s river crossings multiplied. ICOMOS records that Bosnia and Herzegovina was occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1878 and annexed in 1908, and that in this period administrative, military, cultural and Christian religious buildings were established, mainly on the right bank. There a new quarter was laid out on a regular plan, which ICOMOS contrasts with the more organic growth of the left bank, with its winding streets on steeper slopes and its open spaces for trading, recreation and prayer.

The old pattern of a bazaar joined by a single bridge was altered “to a considerable extent” in these decades, ICOMOS says, as new quarters were built on European planning principles and other bridges were thrown across the river. The town was also connected by rail and new roads to Sarajevo and the Adriatic. The administrative buildings of the old town all date from the Austro-Hungarian period, in Neo-Classical and Secessionist styles. Stari Most, in other words, now shared the Neretva with newer crossings, but it remained the one around which the historic town was arranged.

Conservation in Mostar has a long history of its own. ICOMOS dates its first steps to 1872, when the Ottoman Grand Vizier issued a decree “prohibiting the export of antiquities and the destruction of old buildings”. The old town suffered serious damage in the Second World War, and between 1945 and 1965 new laws and institutions supported the study and restoration of historic buildings, including the Old Bridge and the madrasah of Koski Mehmed Pasha. In 1986, according to ICOMOS, the restoration of the historic town received an Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

Destruction and reconstruction, 1993 to 2004

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995 brought what ICOMOS calls the “systematic destruction of much of the Old Town by bombardment and fire”. Among the structures wholly or partly destroyed, it lists the Old Bridge with its towers, the old warehouses and shops near the bridge, all the domed mosques, many other Islamic buildings and a number of the Austro-Hungarian administrative buildings. Britannica records that the bridge itself was destroyed by artillery fire on 9 November 1993.

Rebuilding began after the fighting ended. ICOMOS records a UNESCO rehabilitation plan prepared in 1997, master planning by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the World Monuments Fund, and an international experts committee nominated by UNESCO to review the technical work. According to Archnet, supporters of the bridge project included the World Bank, UNESCO, the Council of Europe Development Bank and the governments of Italy, the Netherlands, Croatia, Turkey and France, working with local and national authorities; the work used limestone from the original quarry and stones recovered from the river. Britannica dates the construction from 2001 to 2004, and Archnet gives the reopening as 23 July 2004.

Is the bridge in Mostar today the original?

No: the bridge you see today is a reconstruction, completed in 2004 on the basis of detailed documentation of the original. ICOMOS described it as rebuilt “as a copy, using mainly new material”, with some historic material integrated, especially on the surface. UNESCO records that the reconstruction kept the authentic forms, materials and techniques recognisable and that remaining original material is displayed in a museum.

UNESCO 2005: a bridge rebuilt as a symbol

Mostar’s path to the World Heritage List was long. ICOMOS notes that the nomination was first proposed in 1999 and deferred more than once while the reconstruction and its management were still in progress. Its 2005 evaluation is candid about the difficulty. Measured by the usual test of authenticity, it wrote, “there must be considerable reservations”, because so much of the urban fabric had been rebuilt. It compared Mostar with the Historic Centre of Warsaw, reconstructed after the Second World War, and argued that Mostar differed because the rebuilding had involved large-scale international co-operation and had “become a symbol of the reconciliation of coexistent local communities”.

ICOMOS also stressed that the reconstruction of fabric should be seen as secondary to the restoration of the property’s “intangible dimensions”. It recommended inscription under two criteria, iv and vi. The World Heritage Committee, meeting in Durban in 2005, inscribed the property under criterion (vi) alone, the criterion concerned with association with events, ideas and beliefs, and noted the change of the property’s name to “The Old Bridge Area of the Old City of Mostar”. UNESCO gives the inscribed property as 7.6 hectares, with a buffer zone of 48 hectares. In its words, with the “renaissance” of the Old Bridge and its surroundings, the symbolic power of the city as a symbol of coexistence has been reinforced.

Where does the tour go after Mostar?

After the walk in Mostar on Day 2, the group continues to Sarajevo, where it stays overnight before an extensive tour of the city on Day 3. Sarajevo’s own Ottoman foundations, its Austro-Hungarian chapter and the events of 1914 and the 1990s are the subject of our article on the layered history of Sarajevo. For the full sequence of stops, our day-by-day guide to the Balkans route sets out the whole journey from Dubrovnik to Kotor.

Mostar on the wider Balkans route

Mostar is the first inland town of a route that begins on the Adriatic and ends there. It shows one part of the region’s history very clearly: the Ottoman frontier towns that grew up along trade routes, organised around bazaars, mosques and the crossings that made commerce possible. But it is one chapter, not the whole story. At the other end of the journey, in Kotor, Montenegro, the walls and palaces belong to a Venetian world that held the coast while the Ottoman Empire held much of the interior, and between the two lie Roman, Byzantine, medieval Serbian, Habsburg and 20th-century layers that no single narrative can contain.

On our 19-day small group tour, travelling in a group of up to 16 travellers, mature travellers reach Mostar on the second day of the journey, with the Adriatic behind them and Sarajevo ahead. It is a fitting introduction to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to a route that is best understood, like Mostar itself, as a series of crossings between empires, faiths and landscapes.