Explore Sarajevo / Hidden Gems / Zlatna Ribica
Hidden Gem · Centar · 3 min read
Zlatna Ribica
A small bar near the cathedral, decorated as a still life. Gilt mirrors, velvet, taxidermied birds, antique sewing machines as tables. Open since the early 1990s.
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Address
Kaptol 5, Centar
Hours
Typically 09:00 to 01:00
Price
Drinks ~3–8 BAM
Getting there
3 minutes' walk from Sarajevo Cathedral. Tram to Latinska Ćuprija + 5 minutes.
Time needed
An hour, easily two
Best time
Late evening
Coordinates
43.8593° N 18.4218° E
Navigate
Zlatna Ribica, the Golden Fish, is a single tiny room and a smaller upstairs nook three minutes’ walk from the Sarajevo Cathedral. It has spent the last several decades carefully composing itself into a still life. Some bars take themselves seriously; this one takes itself so seriously it loops back to comedy.
You will see it before you see it. The street, Kaptol, is one of the quietest in the centre. The door is glass, the curtains heavy. Inside, the room is no bigger than a generous living room: about twelve tables, candle-lit, walls layered with gilt-framed mirrors, sketches, photographs, lace, and the occasional carefully positioned taxidermied bird. Old porcelain. Brass instruments. Embroidered cushions on velvet banquettes. A chandelier that looks like it has been here longer than the building. Books no one has opened in years and that are not waiting for you.
The aesthetic
The room reads as a curated overload, at the limit of what is bearable and just on the right side of it. Antique sewing machines serve as side tables. Old portraits of strangers watch you eat. A row of mismatched chandeliers hangs from a ceiling painted to look like an evening sky. The bathroom is part of the experience — red velvet, a vanity table you would not be surprised to find a duchess at, a small dish of toiletries laid out as if for guests.
It should not work. It works. It works because every object in the room is real. Not bought from a chain supplier of “vintage” décor, but accumulated, decade by decade, by people who clearly enjoyed accumulating it. There is no irony in the arrangement, which is part of why it is so disarming.
What to order
Most things on the menu are simple, well-priced, and beside the point. Bosnian coffee comes the proper way in a small džezva, with a cube of sugar and a glass of water. Šljivovica (plum brandy) and kruškovac (pear brandy) are served in small glasses that match the table. Boza — the slightly fizzy fermented millet drink — is on the menu, and is the right thing to order if you don’t drink alcohol. There is a small list of mulled wines in winter. There is no kitchen. For food, walk five minutes in any direction.
What you are buying is the room. Sit upstairs if a table is free. Order slowly. Read the books, or pretend to.
Why it has become beloved
In a city that holds Habsburg architecture, two important memorials, and a handful of restaurants worth the walk, it is curious how often visitors leave with Zlatna Ribica as the place they remember best. The bar has become a small Sarajevan landmark, partly because it is so generous to a camera, but mostly because it carries something the rest of the city does too, only more quietly: that a small room can be a whole world, and that beauty is worth the slight ridiculousness of trying for it.
You will not be alone there. You will not, exactly, be a tourist there. You will be, for an hour or two, sitting in someone’s idea of how a small Sarajevan evening should look. They have been right about it for thirty years.
Sources & further reading
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Ph: Mark Chorlton · CC BY-SA 2.0
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