Sarajevo and Mostar

Sarajevo's old bazaar was laid out in the fifteenth century, soon after the Ottomans founded the city, and it still works much as a bazaar should: a grid of low, wooden-shuttered shops grouped by trade, with streets named after the craftsmen who once filled them. Kazandžiluk is still the street of the coppersmiths, tapping out trays, coffee pots and engraved shell casings; elsewhere you'll find cafés serving Bosnian coffee in a copper džezva, ćevapi grills, sweet shops piled with baklava and tufahija, and the covered stone market halls known as bezistans. The caravanserai of Morića Han, with its wooden galleries around a courtyard, gives an idea of where travelling merchants once stayed.

Walk west along Ferhadija and you'll notice a line set into the pavement marked "Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures": on one side the low Ottoman town, on the other the grander Habsburg city built after 1878. It's a neat summary of the place in a single step.

TipShops open late morning and the lanes are quietest early; come back after dark, when the cafés fill and the call to prayer echoes off the rooftops.

The wooden, kiosk-shaped fountain in the middle of Baščaršija's main square is the city's best-loved symbol and its default meeting point. The original was built by the Ottomans in the eighteenth century; the present one, a pretty pavilion in the Ottoman style, dates from 1891 and was designed by the Czech architect Alexander Wittek, who also designed City Hall. Local lore says that anyone who drinks from it will return to Sarajevo. Expect pigeons, a lot of them, and a constant stream of people taking photographs.

The finest Ottoman building in Bosnia was completed in 1531 for Gazi Husrev-beg, the governor who did more than anyone to turn Sarajevo into a real city, funding a library, a school, a hammam and a covered market as well as this mosque. The domed prayer hall, with a tall slender minaret and a shady courtyard with an ablution fountain, is still the city's principal mosque. Across the street, the founder's medresa and the modern library building that holds his collection of manuscripts continue his endowment almost five centuries later. The mosque was hit repeatedly during the siege and has been carefully restored.

TipVisitors are welcome outside prayer times for a small fee. Cover shoulders and knees; women should bring a scarf, though loan robes are usually available.

In an upper floor of a building next to the Catholic cathedral, this memorial gallery is devoted to the genocide at Srebrenica in July 1995, when Bosnian Serb forces killed more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys after overrunning a UN-declared "safe area". Photographs, video testimony and documentary films tell the story through the people affected: the mothers who still search for their sons' remains, the forensic work of identifying victims from mass graves, and the failures of the international community. It is harrowing, quiet and essential for understanding modern Bosnia.

TipThe gallery is open daily, with audio guides in several languages. Allow at least an hour and a half, including the documentary films.

This small museum, which won the Council of Europe Museum Prize in 2018, tells the story of the siege through the eyes of the people who were children at the time. Each exhibit is an ordinary object, a diary, a ballet shoe, a hand-drawn birthday card, a tin of humanitarian rations, donated by its owner and displayed beside his or her own short account of what it meant. The effect is deeply personal and often unexpectedly gentle, full of friendship, games and first love alongside fear and loss. The museum now collects testimony from children affected by other wars too.

TipIt's a short walk uphill from Baščaršija in the Logavina neighbourhood. Booking a time slot on the museum's website is sensible in summer.

A steep walk up through the old Kovači quarter, past the cemetery of white Muslim gravestones where many of the siege dead are buried, leads to Žuta tabija, a bastion of the eighteenth-century Ottoman city walls. Today it's a terrace with a café and benches, and the best place in Sarajevo to watch the sun go down over the valley, with the minarets and terracotta roofs below and the mountains closing in on every side. During Ramadan, a cannon is fired from here at sunset to mark the breaking of the fast.

TipArrive half an hour before sunset to get a seat on the wall.

At the eastern end of the old town, on the bank of the Miljacka, the Vijećnica is a striped, horseshoe-arched fantasy in the neo-Moorish style the Austro-Hungarians favoured for their new Bosnian province. It opened in 1896 as the city hall, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand was leaving a reception here on 28 June 1914, shortly before he was shot. After the Second World War it became the National and University Library, and on the night of 25 to 26 August 1992 Bosnian Serb shelling set it alight, destroying the great majority of its books and manuscripts. Painstakingly restored, it reopened in 2014, and its glittering octagonal atrium and stained-glass dome are worth seeing in their own right. Downstairs, an exhibition covers the city's history and the building's destruction.

TipCity Hall is open daily, but may close for events and official ceremonies; check the official site on the day.

This modest Ottoman stone bridge of several arches over the Miljacka would be just another pretty crossing if it weren't for what happened on the corner by its northern end on 28 June 1914. There, Gavrilo Princip, a young Bosnian Serb nationalist, shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, setting off the chain of events that led to the First World War. A small museum on the corner covers Sarajevo under Austro-Hungarian rule from 1878 to 1918, and the assassination itself.

Trebević is the mountain that rises directly above the old town, and Sarajevans have escaped to its woods and viewpoints for over a century. The cable car from the Bistrik neighbourhood was destroyed in the war and only reopened in 2018; its gondolas now glide up in about ten minutes to an upper station with sweeping views of the whole valley. From there it's a short walk through the forest to the concrete bobsleigh and luge track built for the 1984 Winter Olympics, when Sarajevo hosted the world. During the siege the mountain became a front line and the track was used as an artillery position; today the abandoned, graffiti-covered chute winds through the trees and makes a strange, compelling walk.

TipThe cable car's operating days change through the year and it has recently closed early in the week, so check the official timetable before setting out. On Trebević, stay on the track, the roads and clearly marked paths; see the safety note below.

During the siege, the only way in or out of the city that didn't cross the front line was a tunnel dug by hand in 1993 under the airport runway, which was held by UN forces. Around 800 metres long and so low that most people had to stoop, it carried food, fuel, weapons, the wounded and many thousands of people between the besieged city and Butmir, on the free side. The family house that hid its southern entrance is now a museum, with a short stretch of the original tunnel you can walk through, a film and displays of wartime equipment. Bullet holes still pockmark the walls.

TipIt lies near the airport on the city's south-western edge, so combine it with an arrival or departure, or take a taxi or a guided tour. Many local guides who run tours grew up during the siege, which adds a great deal.

About three hours north-west of Sarajevo, Jajce climbs a rocky hill above the meeting of the Pliva and Vrbas rivers. It was the last royal seat of the medieval Bosnian kingdom before the Ottoman conquest, and its walls run down from a hilltop citadel through a little town of old houses, mosques, a ruined Gothic church with a bell tower and a set of catacombs carved into the rock. In November 1943 the Yugoslav Partisans held the second session of their wartime council, AVNOJ, here, laying the foundations of Tito's post-war federation; a museum in the hall where they met tells the story.

TipJajce fits between Sarajevo and Mostar as a long day's drive, but it's more relaxing to stay overnight.

Jajce's great surprise is that the Pliva tumbles over a ledge of travertine around 20 metres high right in the middle of town, before joining the Vrbas below. A viewing platform and steps lead down to the foot of the falls, which are at their most powerful in spring. A few kilometres upstream, beside the Pliva lakes, a cluster of small wooden watermills stands on stilts over the water, a peaceful spot for a walk or a swim on a warm day.

On the east bank of the Neretva just upstream of the Old Bridge, this small mosque of the early seventeenth century has a pretty courtyard and, more to the point for visitors, a minaret you can climb. The narrow spiral staircase emerges on a balcony with the definitive view of Stari Most, the river and the old town; the courtyard terrace over the water gives almost as good a view without the climb.

TipThe minaret stairs are tight and steep. Visit early or late in the day for softer light on the bridge.

The old bazaar street on the east bank, named after the goldsmiths who once worked here, leads down to the bridge on slippery, polished cobbles. Today it's lined with stalls and workshops selling copperware, carpets and souvenirs, alongside cafés with terraces hanging over the river. It's busy with day trippers from the coast in the middle of the day, but in the early morning and evening it recovers its charm. Just off the street, a couple of beautifully preserved Ottoman family houses, Bišćević and Muslibegović, show how wealthy families lived.

The Old Bridge, a single slender arch of pale stone leaping almost 30 metres across the Neretva, was completed in 1566 by the Ottoman architect Mimar Hayruddin and stood for over four centuries. On 9 November 1993, during the fighting between Bosnian Croat and Bosnian government forces that divided the city, it was shelled and collapsed into the river. It was rebuilt using the original techniques, and largely stone from the same quarries, and reopened in 2004; UNESCO listed the bridge and the old town around it the following year. The rebuilt bridge has become a symbol of reconciliation, though the city remains divided in many ways.

The bridge is also famous for its divers, who jump from the parapet into the cold river some 20 metres below, a tradition that goes back centuries. Members of the local diving club collect money from onlookers before jumping; an annual competition is held in summer, and the bridge has hosted international cliff-diving events.

TipDon't try the jump yourself without training from the divers' club. Wear shoes with grip: the stone of the bridge is worn smooth and slippery, especially after rain.

Twenty minutes south-east of Mostar, the river Buna bursts out of a cave at the foot of a 200-metre cliff, one of the largest karst springs in Europe. Beside it, a white house with wooden bay windows overhangs the water: a tekke, or lodge, of dervishes, built in the Ottoman period and still a place of Sufi worship. Inside, rooms are laid with carpets and low divans, and a small tomb holds two dervishes. Outside, restaurants along the riverbank serve fresh trout, and boats take visitors a little way into the mouth of the cave.

TipVisitors are welcome to look around the tekke; women are asked to cover their hair, and robes and scarves are provided. Go early to avoid the coach groups.

On a terraced hillside above the Neretva, south of Mostar, Počitelj is a fortified village of stone houses, a domed sixteenth-century mosque, a clock tower, a hammam and a hilltop tower, all enclosed by walls that zigzag up the slope. It was badly damaged in the 1990s and has been extensively restored. The climb up through its lanes and steps to the octagonal tower is hot work in summer, but the view along the green river is the reward. In the season, locals sell pomegranates, figs and fresh juice by the gate.

TipThe stone steps are uneven and unshaded; bring water and go in the morning or late afternoon.

Near Ljubuški, west of Počitelj, the Trebižat river spills over a semicircular wall of travertine about 28 metres high and 120 metres wide into a broad green pool, making a natural amphitheatre of cascades and mist. In summer it's one of Herzegovina's favourite swimming spots, with cafés, rowing boats and shady picnic areas; in spring the falls are at their fullest, and in autumn the crowds disappear. The falls are a short walk down from the car park.

TipEntry for adults is 20 KM, with opening hours that run longer in summer. Swimming is at your own risk, and the travertine edges are fragile, so don't climb on the falls themselves. It's an easy stop on the drive from Mostar to Split or Makarska.