Explore Sarajevo / Destinations / Sarači
Destination · Stari Grad · 3 min read
Sarači
The 15th-century saddle-makers' street that became the spine of Baščaršija — running straight from the Sebilj to the Gazi Husrev-beg complex.
- Established
- 15th century (Ottoman)
- By
- Ottoman pedestrian mahala
Address
Sarači, Stari Grad (from the Sebilj west to the Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque)
Hours
Open street
Price
Free
Getting there
Walk from the Sebilj — Sarači starts at the square's western corner
Time needed
Twenty minutes to walk, an hour to browse
Best time
Late afternoon
Coordinates
43.8594° N 18.4297° E
Navigate
Sarači is the most important street in Baščaršija. It is the long pedestrian artery that runs east-to-west across the entire bazaar — from the Sebilj fountain at one end to the Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque at the other — and almost every visit to the old town uses Sarači at some point, even if the visitor doesn’t notice. It has been doing this since the bazaar was first laid out in the 15th century.
The name Sarači means saddle-makers. When Isa-beg Ishaković founded the city in 1462 he organised the bazaar by trade — Kazandžiluk for coppersmiths, Bravadžiluk for locksmiths, Halači for cotton-fluffers — and the saddle-makers, who supplied the Ottoman cavalry, got the central spine. There are no saddle-makers left. The street name has stayed for five hundred and fifty years.
What it has today
Sarači is now Sarajevo’s main bazaar street. The shops along it are mostly:
- Carpet sellers, particularly along the western half, where prices range from cynical to interesting.
- Copper and brass shops, especially toward the Sebilj end, often with the smith hammering in the open behind a small counter.
- Gold and silver jewellers, mostly fixed-price, with little variation between shops.
- Tourist boutiques of varying integrity — a few are very good, most are stocked with Chinese-made imitations.
- A handful of cafés and ćevabdžinicas opening onto the street.
- Morića Han, at Sarači 77 — the 16th-century caravanserai courtyard now operating as one of the oldest cafés in the city. Step into it. The page lives here.
How to walk it
Begin at the Sebilj square. Look west; you will see Sarači stretching ahead as a flat, broad, cobbled street, roofed in places by old timber balconies. Walk slowly. Stop where the smell of bread or coffee suggests you should. The Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque appears at the far end after about three hundred metres.
A few orientation notes:
- The first hundred metres are the most crowded. Past the entrance to Bravadžiluk on the south, the street thins out.
- Sarači is the only east–west axis through Baščaršija that doesn’t change name. Use it as your reference if the side streets get confusing.
- At the western end — past the Bezistan — Sarači becomes Ferhadija, the broad Habsburg pedestrian artery that runs west into the modern city. The transition is marked by the Meeting of Cultures line in the pavement.
Why it matters
Sarači is the part of Sarajevo that has done its job continuously for the longest. Most cities lose their original commercial spines to redevelopment, gentrification, or war. Sarači was rebuilt after the great Baščaršija fire of 1697, survived the Habsburg restructuring, survived two world wars and the 1992–95 siege, and is still — in 2026 — a working bazaar street where you can buy a copper coffee pot, a wedding ring, a piece of carpet, and a portion of burek, in that order, in twenty minutes.
It is not always a serious shopping street. It is always a serious city street.
Sources & further reading
Keep wandering
Nearby & related
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Ph: Julian Nyča · CC BY-SA 3.0
Stari Grad
Baščaršija
The 1462 Ottoman bazaar of Sarajevo, still a working bazaar. Copper workshops on Kazandžiluk, Bosnian coffee at Morića Han, and a marker in the pavement where the Ottoman city meets the Habsburg one.
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Ph: 11sasapus11 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Stari Grad
Kazandžiluk
Kazandžiluk is the row of coppersmiths' shops that runs east from the Sebilj into Baščaršija. The patterns being hammered here today are the same patterns the smiths' grandfathers hammered. The street is a working workshop, a museum, and a souvenir row in one.
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Ph: Bernard Gagnon · CC BY-SA 4.0
Stari Grad
Kovači Street
A short uphill walk from the Sebilj into the old residential mahala. Coppersmiths and blacksmiths once worked here; today it's Sarajevo's small but serious café row, ending at the Kovači šehidi cemetery where the first president of Bosnia and Herzegovina is buried.
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