The City's Bridge or the Bridge's City

When last I posted, I was in Czechia posting about Prague. Since then, Alrica and I have been in two more countries (though one hardly counts.) But we've also gained one more traveler (at least for a few weeks.) We flew from Prague to Belgrade, Serbia. There we met Syarra, visiting during her winter break. We stayed one night in Belgrade and then flew to Mostar, Bosnia.

Stari Most

The centerpiece of Mostar is a bridge. It is called Old Bridge, or in Bosnian that is Stari Most. It is such a defining feature of Mostar that the name of the city is comes from the word mostari, or bridgekeepers, which refers to the two towers, one on each side of the bridge. Because this isn't just the bridge of the city. In many ways this is the city of the bridge. The bridge made the city.

Alrica and Syarra and the bridge

In the fifteenth century, this area was on the frontier of the Ottoman Empire. Traders and travelers needed a way to cross the Neretva River in this land at the outskirts of the Ottoman Empire. A bridge was needed.

There were temporary wooden bridges, but they weren't good enough. So the Ottomans decided to build a stone bridge. First, they built a smaller bridge across a smaller waterway, the Radobolja River, which is a tributary of the Neretva. They wanted to test out their design and they liked it. This first structure is called the Crooked Bridge. Next, the Ottomans built the Old Bridge bridge, a technological marvel in its time with its semicircular underarch and peaked overarch, supported by the natural walls on either side of the river. There were also two towers built, one on each side of the river. The Crooked Bridge and Old Bridge are only about 100 feet from each other.

The Crooked Bridge

With this important crossing established, a frontier town developed. It was the Wild West of the Ottoman Empire, a pinch point for travelers who needed to get across the water. Beautiful Turkish houses were built here. There was a unique architecture in which mosques, churches, and synagogues were often built next to one another. People of different ethnic groups and faiths lived in relative harmony for centuries.

The symbol of Mostar is the Bridge (in a shield)

The area changed hands from the Ottomans to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but everyday life in Mostar didn't change all that much. The bridge endured as did the people, until 1990.

Looking up from below (and there's me!)

After the death of Tito, the leader of Yugoslavia who had united several different Slavic groups as one identity, that unity didn't last. Wars broke out between the various peoples, atrocities occurred. And in Mostar, one of those atrocities was the destruction of the Old Bridge, the Crooked Bridge, and the historic city around it. The Croats wanted to demoralize the Bosniaks and to eliminate one of their supply lines, and so a beautiful piece of history was lost. At least temporarily.

After the Balkan War, much of Europe, which had sat by while the atrocities occurred, got involved, wanted to help the people who had suffered. Along with UNESCO, they invested money, time, and specialists, collecting as many pieces of the original bridge as they could, and they built a bridge as similar to the original as they could. They used only materials and technology that would have existed when the original Stari Most was made. The Crooked Bridge was also rebuilt as was much of the Old Town around the bridge. And today, the new Old Bridge spans the Neretva exactly as its counterpart had. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The bridge has speed bumps to help you with traction

Since the bridge was rebuilt, in the summer months, young men from Mostar dive from the bridge into the cold Neretva below. They train for years to be able to do it, and apparently collect money from tourists to fund their attempts. At the end of July each year since 1968, an annual diving competition takes place off the bridge. We are here in December, so no one is diving from the bridge.

Here is a piece of history, risen again, giving Stari Most a new life and a new history that will hopefully last as long or even longer than the first.