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Heritage · ·5 min read

Sarajevo Sebilj — a wooden copy of Mimar Sinan's stone fountain in Istanbul

The most photographed object in Sarajevo isn't quite Ottoman, isn't quite Habsburg, and isn't original. Alexander Wittek travelled to Istanbul in 1890, studied the stone sebil at Mimar Sinan's tomb, and came back to draw a wooden version of it for Baščaršija.

By Nedim Hadzimahmutovic · Sarajevo

Here’s a small thing about the Sebilj that most travel guides don’t mention, that most locals don’t think to mention either, and that once you know, you can’t un-know: the most photographed object in Sarajevo is a wooden Habsburg copy of a stone Ottoman fountain in Istanbul.

The Sebilj sits dead centre of Baščaršija, fifty feet from the pigeon crowd. Every first-time visitor takes a picture of it. Every postcard has it on the front. Every “Sarajevo — Where East Meets West” brochure uses it as the token of the East. The legend says a sip from its tap brings you back to the city.

All of that is true. It’s a lovely piece of the city. It’s the meeting point everyone actually uses.

But if you’re being honest, and the Explore Sarajevo house rule is to be honest, the Sebilj you’re looking at is:

  1. From 1891, not the Ottoman period.
  2. Designed by an Austrian, not an Ottoman architect.
  3. Made of wood, not the traditional stone.
  4. Not on the same spot as the original.
  5. Based on one particular fountain the architect had visited in Istanbul.

That last one is the interesting bit.

The trip to Istanbul

The architect was Alexander Wittek, the Vienna-trained Austrian who also drew the Vijećnica and who killed himself in 1894 before it was finished. In the late 1880s, when the Habsburg administration decided the city needed a “properly Oriental” civic style for its new landmark buildings, they sent Wittek to research it.

He went to Cairo. He went to Spain (for the Alhambra). And he went to Istanbul.

In Istanbul he made one particular stop: the tomb of Mimar Sinan — the sixteenth-century Ottoman court architect who built more of the Empire’s landmark buildings than anyone else, including the Süleymaniye and Selimiye mosques. Sinan’s tomb sits at the edge of the Süleymaniye complex. In its small courtyard, there is a stone sebil — the Ottoman category of public charity fountain, a kiosk-style structure that provided free water to passers-by.

Wittek stood in that courtyard, sketched the stone sebil, and took the drawings back to Sarajevo. The Sarajevo Sebilj is his translation of the Istanbul stone one into wood.

The architectural historian Nedžad Kurto, in his paper on Vijećnica, states the connection plainly: “[The Baščaršija Sebilj is] a wooden version of the stone fountain at Sinan’s tomb in Istanbul.” Wittek’s Istanbul research trip is part of the same brief that produced the Habsburg administration’s whole Pseudo-Moorish style — the “invented Orientalism, sourced from Cairo, Andalusia, and Ottoman Istanbul all at once” the site’s Vijećnica has five siblings piece unpacks.

Why any of this matters

You could read this and think: fine, it’s a copy, so what? Copies of Sinan buildings are all over the Ottoman world. There’s nothing shameful about a well-executed reference.

The point isn’t the copying. The point is what the Habsburg architects were doing when they built the Sebilj in 1891.

Sarajevo had been Ottoman for four hundred years. In 1878, the Habsburgs took it over. By 1891, they were thirteen years into governing a Muslim-majority city that until yesterday had been Ottoman. Their political problem was how to look like a legitimate administration to that population without looking like an occupier.

The Pseudo-Moorish style, which Wittek pioneered at the Sebilj and would extend at the Vijećnica, was the answer. Build buildings that reference Islamic architecture, but built by Habsburg architects using Vienna structural systems, in Habsburg-controlled projects, funded by Habsburg budgets. Sinan’s Istanbul stone fountain became a Habsburg wooden fountain on a Baščaršija square, and the translation was itself the political message.

The style worked. The Sebilj is still the meeting point. Nobody in the bazaar in 2026 walks past it thinking it’s a Vienna project. It has become the city’s Ottoman token despite being a Habsburg design, made possible only because the Habsburgs were sophisticated enough to build in the register the city already loved.

That’s the twist. The most Ottoman-looking object in Sarajevo is a Habsburg one. And it’s a wooden translation of a stone original in Istanbul.

What the original in Istanbul looks like

If you find yourself in Istanbul, walk to the Süleymaniye complex on the Golden Horn. Cross to the north side of the mosque. The small walled courtyard next to it is Sinan’s türbe — his tomb. Inside the walls, at the corner, is the stone sebil Wittek would have stood in front of in 1890.

It is smaller than Sarajevo’s. Its style is more restrained. It doesn’t have a wooden roof. But if you look at it and then close your eyes and picture the wooden kiosk at Baščaršija, the family resemblance is instant. The lineage runs from Sinan’s stone fountain in Istanbul in the 1580s to Wittek’s wooden fountain in Sarajevo in 1891, via one Habsburg architect making one research trip.

What to do with this

Next time you feed the pigeons at the Sebilj — everybody does, twice — look at the fountain properly. Notice the wooden roof. Notice the octagonal footprint. Notice the pseudo-Moorish detail on the metalwork. Notice that it doesn’t look 400 years old, because it isn’t.

And notice that the reason it looks the way it does is that in 1890 an Austrian architect went to Istanbul, sat in Mimar Sinan’s tomb courtyard, and sketched.

None of this makes the Sebilj less lovely. It makes it more interesting. The Sarajevo you look at is a layered thing — Ottoman below, Habsburg above, siege bullet-holes on some of the walls in between, and, in the middle of the bazaar square, a wooden Habsburg homage to an Istanbul stone original that everybody thinks is Ottoman.

That’s the version of Sarajevo the site is here to tell you about. Enjoy the fountain. Drink from the tap. Look at the roof. Think of Istanbul.

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