Mostar Audio Tours

Stari Most, the Old Bridge, has spanned the Neretva River at Mostar since 1566, when Suleiman the Magnificent commissioned the Ottoman engineer Mimar Hayruddin to build something that locals assumed was impossible. The single stone arch, 29 meters wide and rising 21 meters above the turquoise water, is one of the finest Ottoman bridges ever built and it stood for 427 years until Croatian forces deliberately shelled it into the river in November 1993. The rebuilt bridge, reopened in 2004, is made from the same limestone quarried from the same hills, using techniques reconstructed from the original plans. The copy is so convincing that UNESCO added it to the World Heritage list, and the divers who leap from its highest point still do so for tips from tourists in the same tradition that has run for centuries.

The Kujundziluk bazaar on the east bank, a lane of silversmiths and coppersmith workshops dating from the Ottoman period, is one of the more authentic surviving Ottoman markets in the Balkans.

The coppersmiths still hammer in their doorways. The cafes in the old caravanserai courtyards serve Bosnian coffee, which comes with a cube of sugar and is drunk by dissolving the sugar on your tongue before sipping, not by putting it in the cup.