Sarajevo Grand Guided Walking Tour Through History and Cultures

Baščaršija and the Sebilj fountain

Baščaršija is the Ottoman bazaar founded in the fifteenth century that still works as Sarajevo's living old town. Low shops with wooden shutters line lanes that are named after the trades once practised in them, and the air carries the smell of grilled ćevapi and Bosnian coffee roasted in copper pots. The guide leads you through Kazandžiluk, the coppersmiths' street where hammered coffee sets and trays are still made by hand, and Bravadžiluk, the former locksmiths' lane that is now the place for ćevapi, all of it halal as a matter of course in a city with a Muslim majority.

At the centre stands the Sebilj, the wooden-style public fountain built in 1891 that has become the symbol of the city, surrounded by the pigeons of Pigeon Square. Any Baščaršija tour revolves around this square, and the guide explains how the bazaar grew around a caravan road, a mosque and a public bath. You pass here twice, so there is time for photos and a quick browse.

The Latin Bridge and the Emperor's Mosque

The walk begins beside the Latin Bridge, a small Ottoman stone bridge over the Miljacka river with three arches and a long history as the crossing between the old town and the south bank. It is famous for a single moment: on 28 June 1914, at its northern end, the shots were fired that triggered the First World War. The guide tells the story at the spot itself, in front of the small museum on the corner, and explains how the event changed Sarajevo, Bosnia and the whole of Europe.

A few steps along the river stands the Emperor's Mosque, the first mosque built in Sarajevo after the Ottoman arrival in the fifteenth century and rebuilt in its present form in the sixteenth. Its calm courtyard and river setting make it one of the quietest corners of the walk and a good introduction to Ottoman religious architecture before the busier Gazi Husrev-beg complex later on.

Vijećnica, the Sarajevo City Hall

Few buildings sum up Sarajevo like the City Hall, known locally as Vijećnica. Completed in 1896 by the Austro-Hungarian administration in a striped neo-Moorish style, it later became the National and University Library, and in August 1992, during the siege, it was shelled and burned with most of its collection. The restoration took years and the building reopened in 2014 with its coloured glass dome, horseshoe arches and painted ceilings recreated in detail. Today it hosts the city council, exhibitions and a memorial to what was lost.

On this walking tour you go inside, which is something many visitors to Sarajevo miss, and the guide explains both the Ottoman-inspired design and the modern story of destruction and rebirth. From the terrace opposite, across the river, you get the classic photograph of the facade reflected in the Miljacka. Allow about twenty minutes here; it is one of the longest stops of the route.

Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque, Morića Han and the clock tower

The Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque, finished in 1532, is the largest historic mosque in Bosnia and the centre of an endowment that shaped the whole old town: a madrasa, a covered market, a library, a public kitchen and a clock tower that still shows lunar time so that prayer hours can be read from it. The courtyard with its fountain is open to visitors outside prayer times, and the guide explains the Ottoman system of charitable foundations that paid for all of this.

Nearby is Morića Han, the only preserved caravanserai in Sarajevo, where merchants arriving along the trade routes stabled their horses downstairs and slept upstairs; today the arcaded courtyard holds carpet sellers and coffee tables. This part of the route also includes the visit to a traditional baklava shop, a chance to taste the walnut and syrup pastry that Sarajevo makes in its own style.

Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures and the Austro-Hungarian quarter

On Ferhadija street a line set into the pavement marks the Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures: behind you the low Ottoman bazaar, ahead the tall Central European facades built after 1878. Standing on it is the simplest way to understand the city, and it makes a popular photo. From here the walk continues past the Sacred Heart Cathedral, the neo-Gothic Catholic cathedral of 1889, and the Orthodox Cathedral of the Nativity of the Theotokos, completed in 1868 with its five domes and tall baroque bell tower.

A short walk away stands the Old Temple, a Sephardic synagogue from the sixteenth century that now houses the Museum of the Jews of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Within a few hundred metres you have seen a mosque, two cathedrals and a synagogue, which is why Sarajevo is often described as the Jerusalem of Europe, and the guide explains how these communities lived together across the centuries.

City Market Hall and the Eternal Flame

The City Market Hall, called Markale, was built in 1895 as a covered market in the style of the great Austro-Hungarian cities, with cast-iron columns and a glass roof over stalls of cheese, cured meat, honey and dried fruit. It is still a working market where locals shop, and the guide takes you inside for a few minutes to see the produce and explain the market's role in the city's daily life, including the hard years of the 1990s.

The route ends at the Eternal Flame on Ferhadija, a memorial lit in 1946 to the liberation of Sarajevo in the Second World War, set in a niche beneath a dedication to the city's military and civilian victims. The flame is a natural finishing point: the pedestrian street leads back towards Baščaršija in one direction and towards the modern centre in the other, and the guide is happy to recommend where to eat afterwards.