Stari Most

Listen first. Below you, the Neretva River runs fast and cold between walls of pale rock. The water has a strange colour, somewhere between emerald and glacier blue. Under your feet, the stone is worn smooth and slightly slippery, crossed by low raised ridges. Those ridges are there for a reason. They give your shoes something to grip as the path climbs steeply to the top of the arch. You are standing on Stari Most, the Old Bridge of Mostar.

The bridge is a single arch of stone. It has no central pillar and no support in the water. It springs from one rocky bank and lands on the other. From the river, it looks thin, almost weightless, like a line drawn across the gorge. From up here, you feel the height. In summer the drop to the water is more than twenty metres. The bridge connects two halves of the old town, and for centuries it has been the heart of the city.

The bridge you see was first completed in the sixteenth century, in 1566. At that time, this region was part of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish state that ruled much of southeastern Europe for centuries. The bridge was commissioned under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. It replaced an older wooden crossing that hung over the gorge on chains. Travellers said that wooden bridge swayed badly. A stone arch was a statement of power, of engineering skill, and of permanence.

The builder is remembered as Mimar Hayruddin. The word mimar means architect. He is often described as a student of Mimar Sinan, the most celebrated architect of the Ottoman world. There is a well-loved story about him. Legend has it that Hayruddin was so afraid the arch would collapse when the wooden scaffolding came down that he prepared for his own funeral. Locals say he disappeared on the day of the test. The arch held. Whether the tale is true or not, it shows how daring this design felt.

Now look at the stone itself. It is a local limestone called tenelija. It is pale, almost cream in colour, and it glows in late afternoon light. Builders valued it because it is fairly easy to cut when fresh, and it becomes harder with time and weather. Look closely at the blocks along the sides of the arch. You can see how carefully they fit together. The shape of the arch is tall and slightly pointed, which spreads the weight down into the banks.

Here is something many visitors miss. The name of the city comes from this crossing. In the Ottoman period, guards called mostari watched over the bridge. The word means bridge keepers. Over time, the town that grew around them took their name. So Mostar is, quite literally, the city of the bridge keepers. Very few places in the world are named after the people who guarded a single structure.

At each end of the bridge stands a stone tower. These towers were part of the defences that protected the crossing. On one side is the Tara tower, and on the other is the Halebija tower. Over the centuries, they served as guard posts, storage spaces and even prisons. Today, they frame the bridge like two bookends. Notice how the towers and the surrounding walls form a small fortified gateway on each bank.

If you wait on the bridge for a while, you may see something remarkable. Young men in swimming trunks stand on the parapet, the low stone wall at the edge. They are divers. Jumping from this bridge into the river is a tradition that goes back centuries. The divers often collect money from the crowd before they jump. When enough has been gathered, one of them climbs onto the edge, pauses, and drops into the cold green water below. A local diving club keeps this tradition alive, and summer competitions draw large crowds.

Now comes the hardest part of the story. In 1993, during the war that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, the bridge was shelled. On the ninth of November that year, the arch collapsed into the river. People around the world saw the images. For many, the loss of the bridge became a symbol of the destruction of the war itself. A structure that had stood for more than four centuries was gone in a single day. Near the bridge, you may notice a small stone with the words "Don't forget '93" carved into it.

After the war, an international effort began to rebuild the bridge. Engineers studied old photographs, drawings and surveys. Divers searched the riverbed for fallen stones. New blocks of tenelija were cut from local quarries, and builders used traditional methods wherever possible. The aim was not to build a modern copy, but to make the bridge as close to the original as they could. The rebuilt bridge opened in 2004. The following year, the old bridge area was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List.

So the bridge under your feet is both old and new. Its design is from the sixteenth century. Most of its stone is from the early twenty-first century. Some people find that strange at first. But think about what it means. The people of this city chose to rebuild the same arch, in the same stone, in the same place. For many in Mostar, that choice matters as much as the original construction did.

When you step off the bridge, explore the streets around it. On one bank, the old bazaar street called Kujundžiluk runs uphill. Its name comes from the coppersmiths who once worked there. You will still find small shops selling hammered copper plates, coffee sets and other crafts. The street is paved with smooth river stones, so watch your footing. Nearby cafés look straight onto the bridge, and many people sit for hours with a small cup of strong coffee.

Before you go, find a spot at the river level if you can. From below, the arch looks completely different. It rises against the sky, very thin and very high. You can hear the water rushing over the rocks and see the light on the pale stone. Take a moment there. Watch the people crossing above you, small figures on a narrow line of stone. Then, as you walk away, notice how often your eyes turn back to look at the bridge again.