Sarajevo: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
There is a line set into the pavement halfway along Ferhadija. On one side of it the buildings are Ottoman, low and wooden, laid out around a sixteenth-century mosque and its market; on the other they are Viennese, five storeys of plasterwork put up after 1878 when Austria-Hungary took Bosnia and set about making Sarajevo look European. You can stand with a foot in each. Within four hundred metres of that line there is a mosque, a Catholic cathedral, an Orthodox church and a synagogue. Two hours, flat.
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A short history of Sarajevo
The Ottomans founded Sarajevo around 1461, and in the 16th century the governor Gazi Husrev-beg built the mosque, market and inns that still stand in Baščaršija. Sephardi Jews arrived in the city in 1565, and the National Museum still holds the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated manuscript from 14th-century Spain. In 1878 the city came under Austro-Hungarian rule, and on 28 June 1914 the heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated here, a killing that sparked the First World War. In 1984 it hosted the Winter Olympics. From April 1992 to February 1996 it was under a siege of 1,425 days, the longest of a capital city in modern times.
The ten best sights in Sarajevo
1Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque5 marks, from 1531, and the whole quarter was endowed with it
2Clock TowerFrom outside only, and it keeps lunar time — midnight is at sunset
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3Gazi Husrev-beg Bezistan
Free, a covered market street from 1540, and still shops
4Morića HanFree, the last caravanserai standing, and there is a café in the yard
5Emperor’s MosqueFree, from 1457, the oldest in the city, and across the river
6Old Orthodox Church3 marks, sunk below street level, and the icon museum is in it
7Sacred Heart CathedralFree, Catholic, from 1889, and a Sarajevo Rose is at the door
8Ashkenazi SynagogueFrom 1902, still in use, and the only one left of eight
9Jewish Museum5 marks, in the 1581 Sephardic synagogue, and small
10Vijećnica15 marks, the burned National Library, and reopened in 2014
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Sarajevo →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Sarajevo:
Free walking tours in Sarajevo
One line, two empires
There is a line set into the pavement halfway along Ferhadija. On one side of it the buildings are Ottoman, low and wooden, laid out around a sixteenth-century mosque and its market; on the other they are Viennese, five storeys of plasterwork put up after 1878 when Austria-Hungary took Bosnia and set about making Sarajevo look European. You can stand with a foot in each. Within four hundred metres of that line there is a mosque, a Catholic cathedral, an Orthodox church and a synagogue. Two hours, flat.
- Sebilj · A sebil is an Ottoman public drinking fountain given as a charitable act, and this one is a copy of 1913 standing where an eighteenth-century original burned. The saying in the city is that whoever drinks from it comes back to Sarajevo, and the pigeons around it are fed from grain sold at the next stall.
- Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque · Finished in 1531, and it came with an endowment that built and still pays for a library, a school, a covered market, a bathhouse, a soup kitchen and the clock tower — the whole quarter is one man’s charitable foundation, and the deed setting it out survives and is still legally in force.
- Clock Tower · The clock on it does not show the time you are used to. It runs on lunar hours: twelve o’clock falls at sunset, which is when the Muslim day begins, so the hands tell the muezzin when to call for the evening prayer. Because sunset moves, one man climbs the tower twice a week to reset it by hand.
- Meeting of Cultures · The line in the pavement is not old — it was laid as a marker — but what it marks is exact. Behind you the street is Ottoman and was laid out in the 1460s; in front of you it is Austro-Hungarian and was built in about thirty years after 1878, and the two halves were never blended.
- Sacred Heart Cathedral · Built in 1889 in a few years, because the new Austrian administration wanted a Catholic cathedral in a city that had almost no Catholics in it. In the pavement in front of the door is a Sarajevo Rose — a shell crater from the siege filled with red resin, left exactly where it fell.
- Old Orthodox Church · It sits below the level of the street and behind a wall, because under Ottoman rule a church was not permitted to rise above the surrounding houses or be visible from the road. The icon museum inside holds work brought here from Greece and Russia by merchants over three hundred years.
A wrong turn in 1914
On the twenty-eighth of June 1914 six young men waited along the Appel Quay for the archduke’s motorcade. The first bomb missed and wounded an officer; the archduke went on to the City Hall, made a speech, and then insisted on visiting the wounded man in hospital. Nobody told the lead driver the route had changed, he turned into Franz Joseph Street by mistake, was shouted at, and stopped to reverse — directly in front of Gavrilo Princip, who had given up and gone to buy a sandwich. Two hours, and it ends in a burned library.
- Latin Bridge · The bridge is Ottoman and much older than the event, and the shooting happened on the corner of the street beside it, not on the bridge. Under Yugoslavia the bridge was renamed after Princip and his footprints were set in the pavement; both the name and the footprints were removed in 1992.
- Museum of Sarajevo 1878–1918 · The museum is in the corner building the archduke’s car stopped in front of, and it covers the forty years of Austrian rule rather than only the assassination. The pistol Princip used is not here — it is in a Jesuit monastery in Austria, where it sat unrecognised in a cupboard until 2004.
- Vijećnica · Built in 1896 as the city hall in a pseudo-Moorish style the Austrians thought suited Bosnia, and it later became the National Library. On the night of the twenty-fifth of August 1992 it was shelled with incendiary rounds and about two million books burned; people made a human chain under sniper fire to carry out what they could, and one librarian was killed doing it.
- Inat Kuća · The City Hall was supposed to stand where this house stood, and the old man who owned it refused to move. The administration eventually agreed to his terms: a bag of gold ducats, and the house taken apart and rebuilt stone by stone on the opposite bank of the river. It is called the house of spite and it is now a restaurant.
- Kovači Cemetery · White stones in rows up the hillside, and almost every date on them is between 1992 and 1995. It was a park before the siege; the old cemeteries were in sniper fire and unreachable, so the city buried its dead wherever it could, and this hillside filled in three years.
- Yellow Fortress · An eighteenth-century Ottoman gun bastion above the old town, and the whole valley is laid out below it — which is also what made the ring of hills round Sarajevo so effective during the siege. A cannon is fired from here at sunset through Ramadan to signal the end of the fast.
Eleven hundred days under the hills
Sarajevo was besieged from April 1992 to February 1996 — one thousand four hundred and twenty-five days, the longest siege of a capital city in modern history. It sits in a narrow valley with mountains on every side, which is what made it beautiful and what made it indefensible. No water, no power, no road out; the only way in or out was a tunnel dug by hand under the runway of an airport held by the United Nations. Half a day, and some of this is hard to read.
- Tunnel of Hope · Eight hundred metres long, a metre and a half high, dug by hand from both ends between March and July 1993 under the airport runway, which was held by the UN and so could not be crossed. Everything that entered the city for three years went through it on people’s backs, and so did the telephone cable and a fuel pipe.
- History Museum · The permanent exhibition on the siege is made of ordinary objects: a stove built from a biscuit tin, shoes cut from car tyres, a lamp wired to a car battery, a newspaper printed through all four years. The building itself is a 1963 modernist block and has not been repaired since it was shelled.
- Markale Market · A mortar round landed in this market on the fifth of February 1994 and killed sixty-eight people queuing for bread; another on the twenty-eighth of August 1995 killed forty-three, and that second one brought NATO into the war within two days. The names are on the wall at the back and the market still trades.
- Gallery 11/07/95 · The date is the day Srebrenica fell, and the gallery exists to document what followed — eight thousand three hundred and seventy-two men and boys. It was set up privately in 2012 because no state institution had done it, and it is photographs and testimony, with the names read aloud in one room.
- National Museum · In a small room here is the Sarajevo Haggadah, made in Barcelona about 1350 and brought to Bosnia by a family expelled from Spain. A Muslim librarian carried it out under his coat in 1942 and hid it in a village mosque; it was hidden again in a bank vault through the siege. The museum itself closed for three years in 2012 for lack of money.
- Trebević Cable Car · The original ran from 1959 and was the way the city got onto its mountain; it was destroyed in 1992 and the slopes were mined. It took until 2018 to clear the ground and rebuild it, largely with private money, and at the top the 1984 Olympic bobsled track runs down through the trees covered in graffiti.
Getting to Sarajevo and getting around
- Sarajevo Airport · 12 kilometres out, and the Tunnel of Hope runs under the runway
- Railway Station · Trains to Mostar twice a day, and the ride is the best in Bosnia
- Bus Station · Buses to Belgrade, Zagreb and Dubrovnik, and beside the trains
- Baščaršija · The tram turns round here, and the old town starts at the fountain
Cheap eats in Sarajevo
Eight counters where Sarajevo eats standing. Ćevapi are the whole argument: small grilled rolls of minced beef, ordered by the piece in fives or tens, served inside a round flatbread called somun with raw onion and kajmak, and about nine marks for ten. The other one is burek — and here burek means meat only; the same pastry with cheese is sirnica and calling it burek marks you as a foreigner. Coffee comes in a copper džezva with a cube of sugar you hold in your teeth.
- Ćevabdžinica Željo · About 9 marks for ten, cash, and shut by nine
- Ćevabdžinica Hodžić · The other candidate, by the Sebilj, and about the same price
- Petica · The third name people argue about, and the somun is baked on site
- Buregdžinica Sač · About 5 marks a portion, and it is out towards Ilidža
- Markale Market · Fruit and vegetables, open till three, and the names are on the wall
- Morića Han · Coffee in the courtyard of the last caravanserai, about 3 marks
- Rahatlook · Turkish delight and baklava made at the back, and a box is 10 marks
- Pivnica HS · A litre is about 8 marks, and the hall is enormous
Museums in Sarajevo
- National Museum · 10 marks, and the Haggadah room has limited hours
- History Museum · 8 marks, and the siege exhibition is made of household objects
- Gallery 11/07/95 · 12 marks, on Srebrenica, and an hour is what it takes
- Tunnel of Hope · 10 marks, in the house the tunnel came up in, and 25 metres are walkable
- Vijećnica · 15 marks, and the cellar exhibition is about the fire
- Svrzo House · 3 marks, closed Sundays, and shoes off at the door
- Despić House · 3 marks, a Serb merchant family, and the first play in Bosnia was staged in it
- Jewish Museum · 5 marks, small, and closed on Saturday
Nature and day trips near Sarajevo
Sarajevo sits in a trench with mountains on all sides and the ski slopes of the 1984 Winter Olympics half an hour from the centre. Two things to know: some ground off the paths is still mined and marked, so stay on the trail; and the valley traps smog in winter, which is why everyone goes up the mountain in January.
- Trebević · 20 marks return, nine minutes, and the last car is at six
- Vrelo Bosne · 3 marks, and the horse cart is about 20 marks
- Bjelašnica · 30 minutes out, the 1984 men’s downhill, and a lift pass is 40 marks
- Jahorina · 40 minutes out, more lifts and more people, and the same price
- Igman · The ski jumps from 1984 are still standing, and they are free to walk to
- Skakavac Waterfall · Free, 98 metres, and an hour each way from where the road ends
- Goat Bridge · Free, an easy walk along the river, and pilgrims left from it for Mecca
- Wilson Promenade · Free, a kilometre of plane trees, and the city runs it at seven
Things to do in Sarajevo with kids
- Trebević Cable Car · 20 marks return, nine minutes, and a playground at the top
- Vrelo Bosne · 3 marks, ducks and bridges and a horse cart, and flat
- Sebilj · Free, and the grain for the pigeons is 1 mark a bag
- Kazandžiluk · Free to watch, and they will let children hold the hammer
- Avaz Twist Tower · 2 marks to the viewing deck, 176 metres, and a café at the top
- Zetra Olympic Hall · From 5 marks for skating, and skates are hired there
- Bjelašnica · 30 minutes out, snow December to March, and a beginners’ slope
- Morića Han · Free to walk into, a real courtyard, and carpets on the walls
Nightlife in Sarajevo
Sarajevo drinks late and cheap, and it does it in two different registers: the old town, where most places serve no alcohol at all and the point is coffee and conversation that runs past midnight, and the Austrian half, where the bars are. A beer is about four marks and nobody queues.
- Kino Bosna · Monday is the night, from ten, and a beer is 4 marks
- Zlatna Ribica · A bar crammed with antiques, and the bill comes inside a book
- Blind Tiger · Cocktails done properly, and it is behind an unmarked door
- Sloga · The big student club, three floors, and salsa on Tuesdays
- Pivnica HS · The brewery hall, open till midnight, and the dark beer is theirs
- Baščaršija · Coffee and conversation till one, and almost no alcohol here
- Ferhadija · The evening walk, and the whole city is doing it at eight
- Skenderija · The 1969 complex, concerts and markets, and the film festival uses it
Holy places in Sarajevo
A mosque, a Catholic cathedral, an Orthodox church and a synagogue stand within four hundred metres of one another in the centre, which is why the city used to be called the Jerusalem of Europe. All four are open to visitors and none of them charges much.
- Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque · 5 marks, closed at prayer times, and scarves at the door
- Emperor’s Mosque · Free, from 1457, the oldest in the city, and quieter than the other
- Sacred Heart Cathedral · Free, from 1889, and a Sarajevo Rose is set in the pavement outside
- Old Orthodox Church · 3 marks, below street level by law, and the icons are the collection
- Ashkenazi Synagogue · Ask at the door, and the service is on Friday evening
- Jewish Museum · 5 marks, in the 1581 synagogue, and closed on Saturday
- Gazi Husrev-beg Library · 5 marks, 100,000 manuscripts, and most were moved out in 1992
- Blagaj Tekke · 6 marks, two hours south near Mostar, and shoes off
Frequently asked questions about Sarajevo
What is there to see in Sarajevo?
The top sights in Sarajevo are Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque, Clock Tower and Gazi Husrev-beg Bezistan. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Sarajevo?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Sarajevo without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Sarajevo?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Sarajevo, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: One line, two empires.
How do you get to Sarajevo and get around?
The main ways are Sarajevo Airport, Railway Station and Bus Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Sarajevo, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Sarajevo that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Sarajevo for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.