Explore Sarajevo / Destinations / Galerija 11/07/95
Destination · Centar · 4 min read
Galerija 11/07/95
A photographic memorial to the Srebrenica genocide, in a hushed apartment above the bazaar. Two hours. Silence.
Address
Trg Fra Grge Martića 2, Sarajevo
Hours
Typically 09:00 to 22:00. Verify seasonally.
Price
~12 BAM adult; reductions for students
Getting there
5 minutes' walk from Sebilj. Tram to Latinska Ćuprija + 3 minutes.
Time needed
1.5–2 hours, longer with the audio tour
Best time
Mid-morning, when it is quietest
Coordinates
43.8594° N 18.4257° E
Navigate
On the morning of 11 July 1995, the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska, under the command of General Ratko Mladić, entered the UN-designated safe area of Srebrenica, a town in eastern Bosnia where thousands of Bosniak Muslim refugees had taken shelter. Over the following days more than 8,372 Bosniak men and boys, from teenagers to the elderly, were systematically separated from their families and killed. It was the largest mass atrocity on European soil since the Second World War, and was later ruled a genocide by both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice.
Galerija 11/07/95 is the memorial to that event. It is small, restrained, and one of the most extraordinary museums anywhere.
The space
The gallery occupies the upper floor of a handsome building on Trg Fra Grge Martića, a small square at the western edge of the bazaar. It was founded in 2012 by Tarik Samarah, a Bosnian photographer whose long-form documentary work on Srebrenica forms the spine of the collection. The space is restrained. Walls painted a deep, neutral grey. Soft lighting. Hushed footsteps. Photographs hung at a careful eye level. No melodrama in the curation. No melodrama in the room.
The permanent exhibition combines:
- Samarah’s photographs of the exhumation and forensic identification of victims in the years after the genocide. Work of profound dignity and care.
- A wall of portraits of the missing and the identified, gathered patiently from families.
- Short documentary films, including footage from before, during, and after July 1995.
- An audio tour with first-person testimony from survivors and family members, narrated in their own voices.
- A small dedicated room on the Markale market massacres of 1994 and 1995, two mortar attacks on a Sarajevo market that killed dozens of civilians and were among the events that finally moved NATO to intervene.
The audio tour is the cornerstone of the experience. It takes about an hour. Most visitors then stay another hour in the room with the photographs.
Why it matters
There are larger memorials. There are more famous ones. There are several more visited. There are none, in our experience, that look at the events they document with this much care and this little embellishment. The choice not to dramatise is the source of the gallery’s power. The voices on the audio tour are mostly women — mothers, sisters, daughters of the men who were killed — and they speak about specific people. A son who liked football. A father who worked at the post office. A brother who had just married. The genocide is not abstracted. It is, every time, a person.
This is also the only place in Sarajevo where the siege of Sarajevo and the genocide at Srebrenica are presented as a single coherent story. Both events of the same war, both directed against the same population, both still alive in the memory of the people who live within walking distance of the museum’s door.
How to visit
The gallery is at Trg Fra Grge Martića 2, a few minutes from the Sebilj and an even shorter walk from the Sarajevo Cathedral. Entrance is around 12 BAM with student reductions; the audio tour is included. Hours are generous (typically 09:00 to 22:00) but worth confirming on the official website before you go.
Allow two hours minimum. Most visitors find they want longer. Eat before you come; you will not want to immediately afterwards. The gallery has a small shop selling Samarah’s photo books and a handful of academic titles on the war. If you want to keep reading, this is the right place to buy.
A note
This museum, unlike most of the others on this list, is not a place to recommend lightly. It is essential, but it is also difficult. Particularly if you are visiting Bosnia for the first time and have not yet calibrated the weight of the war in the country’s recent memory. Go in the morning. Plan something quiet for the afternoon. Walk slowly through the bazaar on the way back. Sit in a café. Order coffee.
These are not instructions for the museum. They are instructions for the day around it.
Sources & further reading
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Ph: Mark Chorlton · CC BY-SA 2.0
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