Explore Sarajevo A local's guide to the city. 0 PDF guide $5 Search

Explore Sarajevo / Stories

Heritage · ·4 min read

Sarajevo — the first European hotel in Bosnia opened in 1882 on the ashes of a han that had burned three years earlier

Tašlihan was a *han* (traveller's inn) built by Dubrovnik constructors in 1543. It burned in the great 1879 fire. Three years later, on the same ground, Karel Pařík designed Hotel Europa — the first European hotel in Bosnia. The same architect later designed the National Museum.

By Nedim Hadzimahmutovic · Sarajevo

Walk from Morića Han on Sarači three minutes east and you arrive at Hotel Europe. You have just crossed from the last surviving Ottoman traveller’s inn to the first European hotel ever built in Bosnia. The distance is three minutes. The gap is three centuries.

The han that burned

Tašlihan was built between 1540 and 1543 by builders brought in from Dubrovnik, skilled constructors hired by the Gazi Husrev-beg waqf. It was a proper merchant’s inn: one entrance that locked at night, a courtyard paved with cobblestones, a fountain, a small mosque built on pillars above the fountain, guest rooms covered with small domes and barrel vaults, and a horse stable big enough for an entire trade caravan (per Obralić & Ćorović, 2021).

It burned. More than once. In 1697 when Prince Eugene of Savoy sacked Sarajevo. Again in 1831. Each time it was rebuilt. But the great fire of August 1879, one year into the Habsburg occupation, destroyed it completely. This time nobody rebuilt it.

What rose in its place

Three years later, in 1882, the first European-style hotel in Bosnia opened on the same ground. Hotel Europa. Designed by Karel Pařík, the Czech architect who had arrived in Sarajevo the year before and would stay for the rest of his life. Funded by Gligorije Jeftanović, a wealthy Sarajevan merchant who saw the commercial opportunity in what the fire had cleared.

The speed tells you something. The Habsburg administration did not wait decades. It built its first European hotel within four years of arriving. On the ashes of a han the 1879 fire had helpfully removed.

Pařík, the same architect, later designed the National Museum (1909-1913), the Ashkenazi Synagogue (1902), and roughly seventy other buildings across the city. The man who drew the first European hotel also drew the most important museum. Same hand, same city, thirty years apart.

Four hans, one survivor

Obralić and Ćorović’s 2021 study documents four large hans in the Baščaršija area. Only one made it:

  • Kolobara (1462), burned four times. The final fire in 1937 finished it.
  • Tašlihan (1543), burned 1697, 1831, destroyed 1879. Replaced by Hotel Europa.
  • Đulov Han, gone. Now the site of the Islamic Religious High School.
  • Morića Han, still standing. Could hold 300 people and 70 horses. Burned in December 1957, restored 1971-1974, returned to the Gazi Husrev-beg waqf in 1998.

In 1878, per the historian Kreševljaković, there were 50 hans in Sarajevo, large and small, capable of accommodating 2,640 people and 1,262 horses. By the end of the Habsburg period, almost all were gone. Replaced by hotels that brought, as Obralić and Ćorović put it, “a new cultural scope to Sarajevo.”

The transition was not smooth

The authors’ conclusion is more honest than most heritage writing: the transition from Ottoman to Habsburg hospitality “was not smooth in terms of architecture and tourism.” The hans burned or fell into disuse. The hotels rose on their sites. The change happened fast, and it happened through fire as much as through policy.

What you can still walk

Start at Morića Han, the one that survived. Sit in the courtyard. Have a Bosnian coffee at Caffe Divan. Then walk east to Hotel Europe. Three minutes. You have crossed from 1543 to 1882. From a waqf-funded old inn that housed entire trade caravans to a Pařík-designed European hotel that now has 125 rooms, 10 suites, and a swimming pool.

Hotel Europa was destroyed during the siege. It was restored in 2007. The building Pařík designed 140 years ago is still receiving guests — on the same ground where Tašlihan received trade caravans for 336 years before it.

One address. Two hospitality systems. The fire in between.

Sources

  • Ahmed Obralić and Adi Ćorović, “The turning point in tourist facilities in Sarajevo Bazaar,” BizInfo (Blace), Vol. 12, No. 1, 2021, pp. 29-42.
  • H. Kreševljaković, Izabrana djela II (Sarajevo, 1991) — for the 1878 han capacity figures.
  • Related on this site: Hotel Europa guest register, Morića Han, Karel Pařík, Caffe Divan.

Sources & further reading

Keep reading

More from the guide.