The Old Bridge of Mostar Rebuilt

The Stari Most, the Old Bridge of Mostar, is the most famous monument of Ottoman and Muslim heritage in Herzegovina and one of the treasures of the Balkans: a single, daringly high arch of pale dressed stone springing over the fast turquoise waters of the Neretva river between two old stone towers, built in the sixteenth century by an architect of the school of the great Ottoman builder Sinan, and standing for more than four hundred years as the heart of the old town. In November 1993, during the Bosnian war, the bridge was deliberately shelled and destroyed, its stones tumbling into the river, an act widely felt as an attack on the shared heritage and the very memory of a place where communities had long lived together. After the war the bridge was painstakingly rebuilt, with the help of many nations and international bodies, using its own recovered stones where possible and the same techniques and quarries as the original, and it was reopened in 2004; the restored bridge and the old town around it were afterward recognised as a site of world heritage. The rebuilding became a symbol of recovery and of the reconnecting of a town and its communities after deliberate destruction, and of the restoration of a Muslim and Ottoman heritage that war had tried to erase. This scene depicts the rebuilt bridge around 2004: the graceful new-old arch gleaming over the brilliant turquoise river between its towers, the cobbled lanes, market stalls and minaret of the reviving old town climbing the green valley slopes on either bank. It shows a scene of recovery and return, the mending of what war had broken.