BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA - Sarajevo
Sarajevo is the capital and the largest city of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The
river Miljacka crosses the town from east to west. Sarajevo is also one
of the largest cities in the Balkan.
During the years after the split up of Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Sarajevo
went through a few very rough years. Over the last few years, the
situation has become more stable and now it is possible to visit
Sarajevo again. It has always been an important crossways for different
cultures of the world
The area of present day Sarajevo has a long and rich history dating back
to the Stone age, when the Butmir Culture flourished in the area. The
city itself was founded in 1461 by the Ottomen..Sarajevo flourished in
the 16th century when its greatest donor and builder Gazi Husrev-beg
built most of what is now the old city.Sarajevo was burned down to the
ground in a raid led by Prince Eugene of Savoy in 1697 against the
Ottoman Empire, an event of which the city later never really fully
recovered.. Subsequently, the capital of Bosnia was transferred to
Travnik.
The Congress of Berlin (1878) gave Sarajevo and the rest of Bosnia and
Herzegovina to Austria-Hungary. During that era, the city
was quickly brought up to the standards of the industrial age, but it
also became a
center of the Serbian nationalist movement. The assassination in
Sarajevo of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand and his wife on June 28, 1914, was
an immediate cause of World War I. Sarajevo was the scene of several
important battles between Allied resistance fighters and the Germans in
World War II, during which the city sustained.
After World War II, Sarajevo grew rapidly as it became an important
regional industrial center in Yugoslavia. Modern city blocks were built
west of the old city, adding to Sarajevo's architectural uniqueness. The
peak of city growth occurred in the early 1980s, when Sarajevo hosted
the 1984 Winter Olympics.
The city is the seat of an Orthodox Eastern metropolitan, a Roman
Catholic archbishop, and the chief ulema of Bosnia's Muslims, who
constituted about 50% of the population before the city was torn apart
by war in 1992. Sarajevo has a university (founded in 1946), several
Muslim seminaries, and various institutes of higher education. It is
noted for its Muslim architecture, including its Turkish marketplace and
more than 100 mosques, the most important one dating from 1450.
Sarajevo lies close to the geographical center of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The largest part of the city was built in the Sarajevo valley : a small
plateau at 500 m above sea level, surrounded by mountains that are part
of the Dinarian Alps, a mountain range that connects Croatia, with
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro.
