The story of Stari Most

The city of Mostar takes its name from the bridge keepers, the mostari, who guarded this bridge in Ottoman times. Before it, a wooden bridge hung on chains, and, as the geographer Katip Çelebi wrote, it swayed so much that people crossed it in mortal fear. Commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1557, the stone bridge was designed by Mimar Hayruddin, a student of Mimar Sinan.

The story goes that he was ordered to build it under pain of death, and prepared for his own funeral on the day the scaffolding came down. When finished, it was the widest human-made arch in the world, 30 metres long and 24 metres above the water. On 9 November 1993, during the Croat–Bosniak War, the bridge collapsed after shelling by the Croatian Defence Council.

It was rebuilt as closely as possible to the original, with the same technology and local limestone, and reopened on 23 July 2004. Every summer, divers leap from its arch into the cold Neretva.