Reconstruction of Famed Bridge Begins
The reconstruction of a famous Ottoman-era bridge destroyed in the 1992-95 Bosnian war began in Mostar, in what is seen as a crucial step in the slow process of the ethnically divided town’s reunification.
“We do not want only to link two sides of a river like bridges usually do,” project head Rusmir Cisic said after a ceremony marking the reconstruction of Stari Most, or Old Bridge. “We want to link peoples in Mostar.”
The nearly 90-foot-high, single-span bridge was built in 1566 on the orders of Suleiman the Magnificent. It survived centuries of invasions but succumbed to the Bosnian Croat military forces’ deliberate tank shelling in November 1993.
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