Explore Sarajevo / Hidden Gems / Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures
Hidden Gem · Centar / Stari Grad border · 4 min read
Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures
A brass line in the pavement on Ferhadija marks where the Ottoman quarter ends and the Austro-Hungarian one begins. Two cities in one address book.
- Established
- Marker placed 2012
Address
Ferhadija street at the Sarači junction
Hours
Always accessible
Price
Free
Getting there
2 minutes from the Sebilj walking west, or from the Cathedral walking east
Time needed
5 minutes to walk over it, an hour if you wander either side
Best time
Around noon — the call to prayer and the church bells overlap here
Coordinates
43.8593° N 18.4278° E
Navigate
On the central pedestrian street Ferhadija, at the point where it meets Sarači, a small inscription set into the pavement marks the seam between two Sarajevos. Most people walk over it without noticing. Pause. Read it. Then look both ways.
To the east, the street is Sarači and the architecture is Ottoman: low shopfronts, narrow lanes, the bazaar called Baščaršija, copper workshops, mosques, the Sebilj fountain. To the west, the street is Ferhadija and the architecture is Austro-Hungarian: tall Habsburg facades, broad boulevards, Catholic cathedral, neo-Renaissance commercial blocks, Vienna in miniature.
The marker calls itself Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures. It is one of the most quietly accurate pieces of public design in the city.
The line
A small brass compass plate is set into the cobbles, with the words Sarajevo Meeting of Cultures and arrows pointing east and west. The current marker was placed in 2012. The idea is older. Locals had been pointing visitors to “the line where east meets west” for decades, in roughly this spot. The marker formalised it.
Two architectures meet here because two empires used to meet here. The eastern half of central Sarajevo was built during Ottoman rule (1461–1878): an organic, low-rise city of mosques, hans, and bazaars laid out on the rolling ground of the Miljacka valley. The western half was built during Austro-Hungarian rule (1878–1918): a rigorous European grid of apartment blocks, broad streets, and civic buildings in every neo-style the late 19th century had to offer — neo-Romanesque, neo-Gothic, neo-Renaissance, neo-Moorish, neo-Baroque. The Habsburgs built fast. They also built well. Some of the most beautiful buildings in the city are from this period.
This line marks the boundary of the Ottoman city as it stood when the Habsburgs took over. They built outward from it; they did not build through it. That decision is the reason a 463-year-old bazaar still works as a bazaar today.
What to do at the line
The full experience takes about ten minutes and is one of the most satisfying small walks in any European capital.
- Stand on the brass plate. Read the inscription.
- Look east. The minarets, the wooden shutters, the Sebilj at the end of the street. This is the city the Ottomans built.
- Look west. The Catholic cathedral, the Hotel Europa, the long shopping arcade. This is the city the Habsburgs built.
- Listen at noon. From the line you can hear the call to prayer from the Gazi Husrev-beg minaret to your east, the bells of the Sacred Heart Cathedral to your west, and — if the wind is right — the Orthodox cathedral’s bells from further south. Sarajevans call it “the sound of Sarajevo”. It is unironically beautiful.
The four temples
Within a 400-metre radius of the brass line stand four major active places of worship:
- Gazi Husrev-beg Mosque (1531, Sunni Islam) — the great Ottoman mosque on Sarači, two minutes east.
- Sacred Heart Cathedral (1889, Roman Catholic) — the neo-Gothic cathedral on Ferhadija, three minutes west.
- Cathedral of the Nativity of the Theotokos (1872, Serbian Orthodox) — three minutes south.
- Ashkenazi Synagogue (1902, Ashkenazi Jewish) — four minutes south across the river.
This is one of the densest concentrations of working multi-faith infrastructure anywhere in Europe. It is the architectural fact that gave Sarajevo its sometimes-overused nickname, “the Jerusalem of Europe”. The nickname is loose, but the buildings are not.
Where the nickname comes from
The “Jerusalem of Europe” line was not invented for tourism brochures, even if that is mostly where it appears now. Its origin is older and more specific. In 1492, the year Catholic Spain expelled its Jews under the Alhambra Decree, Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire opened the doors of his territories to the refugees and reportedly remarked that the Spanish king had enriched the Ottoman lands by impoverishing his own. Thousands of Sephardim travelled east. A substantial community settled in Sarajevo, a young Ottoman city only thirty years old at the time, and built a synagogue and a quarter in the bazaar.
By the 16th and 17th centuries Sarajevo had become a small but real centre of Sephardic culture, with its own Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) press, scholarly tradition, and the manuscript that would later be called the Sarajevo Haggadah. The city was known, in this period, as “Mali Jeruzalem” — Little Jerusalem. The current English phrase is a 20th-century inheritance of that older name.
The line on Ferhadija is, in this sense, not just a marker of the architectural seam between Ottoman and Habsburg. It is the geographic centre of one of the few European cities where four working faith communities have shared one valley for five hundred years.
A small caveat
The brass plate is in the pavement. It is small. Half the people who go looking for it walk past it twice. Stand at the intersection of Ferhadija and Sarači, look down, and scan a circle of about three metres. You will find it. The first time we did, we needed a second look.
The walk on either side, however, is unmissable. East for an hour, west for an hour, and you have read the architectural history of the city without opening a book.
Sources & further reading
Keep wandering
Nearby & related
See on the map →
Ph: Desemeus · CC BY-SA 4.0
Hrid / south bank
Ashkenazi Synagogue
Sarajevo's working synagogue, built in 1902 in pseudo-Moorish style by the Austro-Hungarian administration for the Jewish community that had grown rapidly after 1878. Survived the Holocaust as a building, if not as a community. Still active. Friendly to visitors.
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Ph: Julian Nyča · CC BY-SA 3.0
Marijin Dvor / Centar
Avaz Twist Tower
The Avaz Twist Tower is Sarajevo's tallest building (142 metres, completed 2008). A small public observation deck on the 35th floor costs around 5 BAM and gives you the full valley. Skip the café at the top. Take the view.
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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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