History · October 3, 2026 ·10 min read

Sarajevo Brewery — 1864, and the water that kept a besieged city alive

In 1864 a Slovenian brewer named Franz Riegler opened a brewery in Sarajevo under a nine-year contract from the Ottoman authorities. It has been operating on the same site ever since. During the 1992–1995 siege, the brewery's underground artesian spring became one of the main working water sources for the besieged population. Thousands queued daily; the queues were among the most-shelled spots in the city. What the brewery is now, and what happened at the water spigot in the summer of 1993.

By Nedim Hadzimahmutovic · Sarajevo

Sarajevo Brewery — 1864, and the water that kept a besieged city alive — Ph: **Watalicom** · source · CC BY-SA 4.0

The Sarajevo Brewery, Sarajevska pivara, sits on the corner of Terezije and Franjevačka streets in Sarajevo, on the north bank of the Miljacka, ten minutes on foot east of the Latin Bridge. The building is a large Habsburg-era brick industrial complex from 1894, replacing a smaller earlier Ottoman-era workshop that had operated on the same site since 1864. The brewery is a working business today. It produces the Sarajevsko Pivo lager brand, runs a brewpub in the ground-floor restaurant, and maintains an artesian mineral spring that has been in continuous municipal use for approximately 160 years.

The brewery matters for two reasons. It is the oldest continuously operating industrial business in Sarajevo and one of the two oldest in the Balkans. And, more concretely, its underground artesian spring was, during the 1992–1995 siege, one of the main working water sources for approximately 380,000 besieged Sarajevans. The water queue at the brewery’s tap was one of the most heavily shelled locations in the city, and the 12 July 1993 shell that killed twelve people in the queue is one of the sites marked by a Sarajevo Rose (see our Sarajevo Roses story).

Both facts are inseparable from the working identity of the brewery today. Sarajevans use “go to the brewery” as a phrase that means, depending on context, going for a beer at the brewpub, filling a water container at the tap, or, on the dates when the shelling anniversaries fall, going to remember something. The brewery has been all three things simultaneously for the last thirty years.

The 1864 founding

Franz Riegler, a Slovenian brewer from Vipava in the Habsburg lands, founded the Sarajevo Brewery in 1864. Riegler had trained as a brewer in Munich and Vienna in the 1850s, and had noticed that the Ottoman-era Balkans lacked substantial commercial breweries producing European-style lager. He identified Sarajevo as a plausible site: the city had a substantial and growing Christian population (many of whom drank beer), it had a working Ottoman commercial-permit system that could grant nine-year commercial contracts to foreign entrepreneurs, and it had a substantial underground artesian aquifer whose water was, when tested, suitable for brewing.

Riegler negotiated a nine-year contract with the Ottoman provincial authority in 1863, established the brewery under his own name in 1864, and began commercial operations in 1865. The original brewery was a small wooden-and-brick workshop producing approximately 800 hectolitres per year (roughly 80,000 litres), modest by contemporary Central European brewery standards, but substantial for a mid-sized Ottoman provincial capital.

The product was bottom-fermented lager in the Munich Helles style, recently standardised in Bavaria. Riegler imported his malt from Bohemia and his hops from Bavaria, using the artesian spring water as the local ingredient. Contemporary Sarajevan press accounts received the lager well. By 1875 the brewery was producing approximately 3,000 hectolitres per year.

Riegler died in 1889. His son and later his grandson continued running the brewery. In the 1890s, under the Habsburg administration that had by then replaced the Ottoman regime, the brewery underwent a substantial expansion. The family built a new brick industrial building on the same site in 1894 (the building that stands today) with modern German brewery equipment, cold-storage cellars, and a bottling line. The new brewery had annual capacity of approximately 30,000 hectolitres.

The socialist Yugoslav state took over the brewery in 1946 as part of the postwar nationalisation of industry. It kept operating through the Yugoslav period, producing the Sarajevsko Pivo brand that remains its main product today. Privatised in the early 2000s, it now operates as Sarajevska pivara D.D., a joint-stock company with headquarters at the original site.

The 160-year continuous operation of the brewery on the same site, through Ottoman, Habsburg, interwar Yugoslav, wartime Ustaša, socialist Yugoslav, wartime siege, and postwar Bosnian phases of Sarajevan history, is one of the more remarkable pieces of Bosnian industrial continuity.

A photograph of Sarajevo after the August 1879 fire — from the same decade as the Sarajevska pivara's founding in 1864, when the brewery's use of the Miljacka springs was already established. — Sarajevo after the 1879 fire. Fifteen years after the brewery opened. Photograph: **Ignaz Funk**, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain (life+70)

The spring

What makes the brewery matter beyond its own commercial operations is the artesian spring. Beneath the building, at approximately 60 metres depth, an underground aquifer produces clean, drinkable, mineral-rich water at approximately 12°C year-round. Riegler tested the spring in 1863 and found exactly the mineral profile suitable for Bavarian-style lager brewing. It has been in continuous use ever since.

A bricked cistern under the brewery basement encloses the spring. A gravity-fed pipe carries water from the cistern to the brewery’s mash tuns for brewing. A separate pipe, installed by the Habsburg administration in 1897, carries water to a public street tap on the outside wall, from which any resident of Sarajevo can, in principle, draw water for personal use.

For most of the 20th century the street tap was a modest civic amenity. Sarajevans occasionally filled personal water containers there, particularly during hot summers when the municipal water supply had scheduling limitations. Nobody thought of it as a major site.

Between April 1992 and February 1996, it became the most important source of clean drinking water for approximately 380,000 besieged Sarajevans.

The siege water

The siege severed the city’s municipal water supply. Bosnian Serb forces had cut the main aqueducts at their pumping stations, now in Serb-controlled territory. Alternative supply through the Tunnel of Hope covered essential humanitarian aid but not domestic use. The city’s population depended, for four years, on a patchwork of surviving springs, wells, and improvised water-collection points.

The Sarajevska pivara spring was one of the largest of these. Beer production stopped almost entirely from 1993 onward, but the underground aquifer kept producing water at its full pre-siege flow rate. The brewery administration and the city Water Utility (Vodovod Sarajevo) worked together to extend the pre-existing street tap and, later, to install additional temporary water spigots on the exterior of the brewery building. By late 1993 there were approximately six taps available for public use.

The public queued at the brewery. Multiple published accounts document the pattern: Sarajevans arrived with plastic containers, jerry cans, and buckets, queued along Terezije and Franjevačka, filled their containers, and returned home. The queue could be an hour long. During the worst periods of shelling it was risked deliberately: the alternative was to have no water for the household.

The Bosnian Serb forces surrounding the city knew the pattern. On strict military-target logic, the brewery water tap was a civilian gathering point at a fixed location, an ideal shelling target.

12 July 1993

The most-cited event at the brewery water tap happened on 12 July 1993. At approximately 11:30 a.m., the morning peak of the queue, a 120mm mortar shell landed in the middle of the water queue. Twelve people were killed instantly. Approximately thirty were wounded. The victims were Sarajevans of various backgrounds — Muslim, Serbian Orthodox, Croatian Catholic, Jewish, atheist — of ages ranging from mid-teens to mid-seventies. Some of the names are inscribed on the Wall of Names at Vraca Memorial Park (see our Vraca story).

The impact site — the corner of Terezije and Franjevačka, immediately outside the brewery’s public water tap — is now marked by a Sarajevo Rose in the pavement.

The 12 July 1993 shell was not the only one that fell at the brewery water queue. Smaller-casualty shellings hit in 1993, 1994, and 1995. Nobody has fully documented the total number of Sarajevans killed at the brewery water tap during the siege; multiple estimates put the four-year total in the low-to-middle double digits.

The queue continued throughout the war. Sarajevans continued to arrive with their plastic containers. The fact that the tap was a documented shelling target did not stop the queue, because the alternative was no water. That is the Sarajevan piece of the story.

The brewery today

Sarajevska pivara today is a working brewery, a brewpub, and a small museum. The building at Terezije and Franjevačka is essentially unchanged since the 1894 Habsburg-era expansion. The brewpub occupies the ground floor of the main brewery building and serves the Sarajevsko Pivo range, a standard Munich Helles, a darker Crno Pivo (Sarajevo Dark), and several rotating seasonal beers. The food is standard Bosnian pub fare: ćevapi, sausages, sauerkraut, potato dishes.

The brewpub is one of the more atmospheric restaurants in central Sarajevo. Original 1894 brick vaulting, copper brewing equipment visible through interior windows, low warm lighting, prices moderate by Sarajevo standards (a large beer is approximately 4-5 KM; a mixed meal is 20-25 KM). Sarajevans use it for after-work socialising and for family Sunday dinners.

The small brewery museum in the basement is worth thirty minutes. Inside: historical brewing equipment from the 1864–1894 period; photographs of the brewery through each of the Sarajevan political transitions; documentation of the siege-era water operations, including photographs of the queue, the Sarajevo Rose site, and lists of the individuals killed at the brewery; a small library of Sarajevan industrial and cultural history focused on the brewery site.

The public water tap on the outside wall still works. Sarajevans occasionally fill water containers there, particularly during hot summers. If you visit the brewery, walk around the outside of the building before entering. The tap is on the Franjevačka side.

What to notice

The 1864 Ottoman-era commercial contract. Riegler’s original nine-year contract with the Ottoman provincial authority hangs in the small museum, one of the few surviving mid-1860s Ottoman-era Sarajevan commercial documents.

The 1894 building brickwork. The Habsburg expansion survives as one of the few pieces of Sarajevan industrial-Historicist architecture. Compare it to the earlier Ottoman commercial buildings in Baščaršija and the later socialist industrial buildings elsewhere in the city.

The copper brewing equipment. Several of the copper mash tuns are original 1894 fittings, still in use. The equipment is visible through interior glass panels in the brewpub.

The Sarajevo Rose on the corner. Outside the brewery, immediately opposite the main entrance, at the corner of Terezije and Franjevačka. It marks the 12 July 1993 shell impact.

The public water tap on the Franjevačka wall. Bring a small water bottle; fill it; drink the same water that Sarajevans have drunk continuously since 1863. The mineral profile is real: the water is soft, slightly alkaline, with a faint mineral finish that beer specialists identify as ideal for Munich-style lager. It also tastes, in the Sarajevan sense that thirty years of postwar Sarajevans understand, of the summer of 1993.

Practical

Address: Franjevačka 15, Sarajevo. Corner of Terezije. Ten minutes on foot east of the Latin Bridge.
Brewpub hours: 10:00–23:00 daily. Kitchen open until 22:00.
Museum hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 10:00–17:00. Closed Monday. Small entry fee (~5 KM).
Beer: approximately 4-5 KM for a large glass. Cash and cards accepted.
Food: standard Bosnian pub fare, 20-30 KM for a mixed meal.
Water tap: outside the building, on the Franjevačka wall. Free. Always accessible.

If you have an evening in Sarajevo, visit the brewpub for dinner around 19:00 and stay through 21:00. The mixed clientele, Sarajevans and international visitors, older and younger crowd, a mix of families and after-work drinking parties, is one of the more distinctive middle-class-Sarajevan atmospheres available on any given evening.

Sources

Sarajevska pivara D.D., corporate historical archive. Records of the 1864 Riegler contract and subsequent operations. Sarajevska pivara.
Robert J. Donia, Sarajevo: A Biography (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006). Chapters on the 1878–1918 Habsburg-era industrialisation and on the 1992–1995 siege.
Emily Gunzburger Makaš and Tanja Damljanović Conley (eds.), Capital Cities in the Aftermath of Empires: Planning in Central and Southeastern Europe (Routledge, 2010). Chapter on Sarajevo’s Ottoman-to-Habsburg industrial transition.
Peter Sugar, The Industrialization of Bosnia-Hercegovina, 1878–1918 (University of Washington Press, 1963). The standard economic history reference on the wider period.
Vodovod Sarajevo (Sarajevo Water Utility), historical records of the 1897 street-tap installation and the 1992–1996 siege-era water operations.
Sarajevo City Museum, permanent exhibition on siege-era water and food distribution, at the Latin Bridge branch.
Various Oslobođenje and Dnevni avaz coverage of the 12 July 1993 event and subsequent anniversary commemorations.

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