Metravel city quest

Sarajevo quest: where East and West meet

City Sarajevo: free walking route “quest: where East and West meet” along the sights. 11 points. Approximately 3 h. Quests and legends - straight from your

In 1462, Ottoman governor Isa-beg Ishaković founded a new city on a small settlement's site: a bridge over the Miljacka, a mosque, an inn and a bathhouse. The city was named Sarajevo, from ‘saray’, palace. Half a century later, governor Gazi Husrev-beg invested a fortune: mosque, madrasa, covered market and clock tower, making the Baščaršija trading district a heart still beating here.

Sarajevo did not stop at one era. Austria-Hungary arrived in 1878, and Viennese-style stucco façades rose a couple of hundred metres from the minarets. The city became a place where one street takes you from the Ottoman Empire into Europe. A mosque, synagogue, Catholic cathedral and Orthodox church stand side by side, all within a gentle walk. Hence Sarajevo's name, the Jerusalem of Europe.

On 28 June 1914, a gunshot by the Miljacka set empires against each other and began the First World War. The 20th century did not spare the city afterwards either. In the early 1990s, Sarajevo endured the longest siege in modern European history. Its city hall, turned national library, burned; millions of pages became ash. But the city rebuilt, and today a person with prayer beads, a person with a cross and a person with neither walk its paving equally peacefully.

Today you will cross this crossroads from West to East, like an archaeologist uncovering layers. Begin in the European city at the Gothic Revival cathedral, step over a bronze line literally dividing Sarajevo into two civilisations, stand at the corner where a gunshot changed the world, enter a 16th-century stone market, hear coppersmiths hammering patterns, and finish at the city hall that burned and was reborn.

What to do: 1) Read the story and task at each stop. 2) Find the place on the map and walk to it. 3) Look around and answer the question.

This walking route is about two and a half kilometres long, entirely on pedestrian streets and the old city's riverbank. We start on Fra Grge Martića Square by the cathedral. Let's go!

What is on the route

The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.

  1. The cathedral — Europe makes its presence known — Sacred Heart Cathedral (Katedrala Srca Isusova), Fra Grge Martića Square

    You stand before Bosnia and Herzegovina's largest cathedral, a declaration of an entire era. Built in 1884–1889, just a few years after Austria-Hungary's arrival, it was designed by Josip Vancaš and Baron Karl Schwarz in Gothic Revival with Romanesque features, modelled on Notre-Dame in Dijon, Burgundy.

  2. The meeting of cultures line — Ferhadija, Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures line (western end of the bezistan)

    From the cathedral, turn onto Ferhadija, the main pedestrian street, and walk east. For a few hundred metres, you are surrounded by Europe: shop windows, stucco and apartment houses from the Austro-Hungarian era.

  3. Latin Bridge and the gunshot that changed the world — Latin Bridge (Latinska ćuprija), corner of Obala Kulina bana and Zelenih beretki

    Turn right from the line and head south. In a couple of minutes, lanes bring you to the Miljacka and an Ottoman stone bridge with four arches.

  4. The bezistan — a stone corridor of trade — Gazi Husrev-beg’s Bezistan (Gazi Husrev-begov bezistan), between Zelenih beretki and Ferhadija

    From the bridge, return to the north bank and walk a couple of short blocks up, away from the river. Before you is the southern entrance to Gazi Husrev-beg's covered market, the bezistan.

  5. Sahat-kula — a clock in no hurry for midnight — Sahat-kula clock tower, Mudželiti veliki, beside Gazi Husrev-beg’s Mosque

    Turn right from the bezistan's northern exit. Around the corner, a thirty-metre stone tower rises above shop roofs, the tallest of twenty-one clock towers once built throughout Bosnia.

  6. Gazi Husrev-beg’s Mosque — Baščaršija’s heart — Gazi Husrev-beg’s Mosque (Gazi Husrev-begova džamija), Sarači

    A few steps from the tower's foot bring you to the gates of Bosnia and Herzegovina's main mosque. Built in 1531, it was funded by Gazi Husrev-beg, governor of Bosnia from 1521 to 1541, who invested more in the city than anyone before him.

  7. Old Orthodox Church — a hidden church (optional) — Old Orthodox Church and museum (Stara pravoslavna crkva), Mula Mustafe Bašeskije 59

    An optional stop. Leave the mosque courtyard, go a block east along Sarači and turn left.

  8. Sebilj — the fountain people return to — Sebilj, Baščaršija Square

    Return to Sarači and continue east. The street flows into a broad square with pigeons circling above it.

  9. Kazandžiluk — the coppersmiths’ street — Kazandžiluk, beyond Baščaršija Square’s southeastern corner

    From the fountain, turn into the square's southeastern corner: Kazandžiluk, ‘coppersmiths' street’, begins here. Kazandžije, copper craftsmen, have worked here for almost five hundred years.

  10. Vijećnica — the city hall that burned and was reborn — Vijećnica, Obala Kulina bana, by Šeher-Ćehaja Bridge

    The coppersmiths' street leads downhill to the river. Turn left and follow the embankment a little east.

  11. Inat Kuća — the house moved out of defiance (optional) — Inat Kuća, Veliki Alifakovac 1, across Šeher-Ćehaja Bridge from Vijećnica

    An optional stop: cross Šeher-Ćehaja Bridge, one of Sarajevo's oldest crossings, dating to 1620, to the other Miljacka bank and look back at Vijećnica. When the city cleared land for the future city hall in the 1890s, a man named Benderija lived there.

Where to go next

This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.

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