A local's guide to Sarajevo. Long-form guides to destinations, neighbourhoods, and hidden corners, written by someone who lives in the valley and pays for his own coffee.
Between Mula Mustafa Bašeskije Street and Ferhadija — at the exact seam where the Ottoman čaršija meets the Habsburg grid — sits a small, half-visible courtyard 27 metres wide and 50 metres...
The catalogue
Sarajevo’s working synagogue, built in 1902 in pseudo-Moorish style by the Austro-Hungarian administration for the Jewish community that had grown...
The Avaz Twist Tower is Sarajevo’s tallest building (142 metres, completed 2008). A small public observation deck on the 35th...
Built for the 1984 Sarajevo Winter Games and last raced for the 1991 World Cup, the bobsled and luge track...
Ferhadija is the broad pedestrian street that begins at the Sarači–Sarači transition (marked by the Meeting of Cultures line in...
A small, deliberately unflashy memorial museum to the Srebrenica genocide of July 1995. Founded by photographer Tarik Samarah in 2012,...
Founded in 1882 to a design by Karel Pařík, Hotel Europe (Hotel Evropa) was the first purpose-built hotel of the...
A locals' atlas
Sarajevo’s oldest still-active ćevapi restaurant, opened in 1957 by the Ferhatović family. Three generations in, slightly quieter than Željo, equally...
A tiny teahouse on a cobbled lane above the Sebilj, where Husein and Dijana Džirlo serve 53 different teas, traditional...
An Ottoman stone bridge from the mid-1500s, in the Miljacka gorge four kilometres east of Sarajevo. Once on the main...
Where to eat lamb in Sarajevo? 7 Šuma (Seven Forests), locally called Restoran Minjo, is a family-run traditional Bosnian restaurant...
Sarajevo’s working brewery, founded 1864. The oldest industrial plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by 1907 the largest brewery in the...
Caffe Divan is the small café that occupies the courtyard of Morića Han — Sarajevo’s only surviving Ottoman han (traveller’s...
The journal
Velika avlija Laure Papo is a small Sarajevan courtyard between Mula Mustafa Bašeskije Street and Ferhadija, at the seam where...
Stari Bar in Montenegro and Baščaršija in Sarajevo are two Ottoman čaršijas that lost the empire in the same year,...
Sarajevo was founded in 1462. The valley it sits in was settled at least 200 years earlier. The Slavic citadel...
Džidžikovac is a small residential ensemble on the slope above Koševo, designed 1948 by the Sarajevan architect brothers Reuf and...
In 1529, Sarajevo had a public toilet with running water and a working sewage system. London’s Great Stink was 329...
The Historical Museum of BiH, opened in 1963 to a 1958 design by three Zagreb architects, Boris Magaš, Edo Šmidihen,...
From the field
Shot for this site by the editor and the photographers who work with it. Every picture credited.
Handini The bar, under the main chandelier. Photographed October 2026.
See all 8 photos → Exclusive to ExploreSarajevo.com
Nedim Hadzimahmutovic at The Trebević cable car and the 1984 bobsled track
Nedim The starting house at the top of the run.
See all 16 photos → Original photographs
Merjem A view across the old house complex.
See all 8 photos → Exclusive to ExploreSarajevo.com
Handini A corner of Svrzo’s House, photographed for this site.
See all 6 photos → Exclusive to ExploreSarajevo.com
Don't miss
