Seeing Mostar’s Stari Most Bridge and its bullet-holed history
Summary
A visit to Mostar is all about the famous UNESCO World Heritage-listed Stari Most bridge. The bridge itself looks like something straight from Naboo in Star Wars with its beautiful sweeping arch held high by the two cylinder towers and with its setting as the focal point of the town surrounded by the Herzegovina mountains. Despite being part-destroyed by the bombing in the 1990 Civil War, they have done a superb job of repairing it and you can still get a great feeling of its history that stretches all the way back to 1474 and the first arch that was added by the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1557. Sitting by the river having lunch overlooking the bridge is beautiful, and when combined with a wander through the nearby Old Town, very much justifies the 2.5 hour / 3.5hour trip from Sarajevo / Dubrovnik
highlights
#1 Sitting having lunch overlooking the beautiful Stari Most, maybe being lucky enough to see some people making the brave jump into the waters
#2 Enjoying Mostar's minaret and mountain-ringed setting
#3 Staying for the evening to be able to experience a far quieter Mostar and having the river beach, at times, largely to yourself
#4 Having a wander further through the Old Town and along the river front - looks like something from Naboo in Star Wars
#5 The rather eerie pillars showing the bullet holes from the not so distant Civil War
#6 The shell-pocketed and hollowed out buildings that show just how much in the middle of the civil war Mostar was
Travel Tips
The experience itself is relatively straightforward, but a few high level tips:
- Bullet holes – the slightly unusual and eerie thing to check out in Mostar are the various scars from the civil war. As you walk from Spanski Trg to the bridge along the rods that follow the east of the river, you’ll see various walls / pillars riddled with bullet holes and a variety of shell-pocketed buildings. They’re very much worth checking out
- The Old Town – the bridge is indeed the focal point, but the Old Town of Mostar, which wraps around and near the bridge, is also quite lovely and is part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing
- Restaurant for views – best views of the bridge are when sitting having food with the view in the background. Best spot is the restaurant Konoba Mlinica Neretva – food is basic, but you’re there for the view
- Stay overnight – the Old Town really is nice, and in the evening the place quietens down as the day tripper leave
- Part of a 2-3 week itinerary – the Western Balkans are a seriously underrated part of Europe and represent one of the best 2-3 week trips you can do, with stunning castles and old towns, and some of the best coastline in the world all compactly housed within 8 countries. For the 2-3 week itinerary for the highlights and general tips for this part of the world, see this travel entry and where Mostar fits in –3 week trip around the Balkans States
Experiences nearby
The below map shows experiences nearby with a colour that reflect the Overall Score of those experiences
Other Old Town Experiences around the World
Score Detail
Background - how many times have you asked someone what a travel experience was like and the response was "amazing" or "awesome"? That response is nice to know, but it makes it hard to differentiate that experience compared to others. That is exactly what these scores are trying to do - differentiate the experience by giving a score out of 10 based on 6 categories and then giving an overall experience score
This overall experience score is calculated by: take the highest of the "Culture" or "Nature" score (1-10) + "Fun factor" (1-10) + "Avoiding the crowds" (1-10) + highest of the "Unique" or "World Famous score" (1-10). Then convert into a score out of 100
Extra detail - the logic being that I find all of the 6 individual scores important, but I don't want to mark an experience down just because it doesn't cover both "Culture" and "Nature", or because it isn't both "World Famous" and "Unique". Take the examples of Safari in The Serengeti and walking through Rome - they both appeal at opposite ends of the nature / culture spectrum, and you can have a fantastic time without needing to appeal to both sides. So, their overall scores aren't penalized for their lack of one or the other, and I've done the same for "World Famous" vs "Unique". But . . . I do think that the "Fun factor" of an experience is important, irrelevant of other factors, and so is "Avoiding the Crowds" (or where there are crowds that add to the experience). So, both of these scores are standalone