Mostar
Mostar is a city in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina, astride the Neretva River and flanked by the Dinaric Alps approximately 125 kilometers southwest of Sarajevo, functioning as the administrative center of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with an estimated population of 103,948 as of 2022 predominantly comprising Croats (49.1 percent) and Bosniaks (44.8 percent).[1][2]
Established around 1452 as an Ottoman frontier settlement named after its bridge keepers ("mostari"), Mostar flourished in the 15th and 16th centuries under Ottoman rule, centering on the Stari Most—a masterful single-span stone arch bridge completed in 1566 by architect Mimar Hayruddin under the supervision of Ottoman imperial architect Mimar Sinan—which facilitated trade and embodied the city's synthesis of Eastern Ottoman and Western influences in architecture and urban planning.[3][1]
During the 1992–1995 Bosnian War, particularly the 1993 Croat-Bosniak clashes, the Stari Most was deliberately shelled and collapsed on November 9, 1993, by Croatian Defence Council forces, exacerbating the city's ethnic schism and symbolizing the war's devastation that left much of Mostar's infrastructure in ruins and its population halved through displacement and casualties.[4][5]
Rebuilt in 2004 through an international effort led by UNESCO employing traditional limestone techniques and local Tenelija stone, the bridge and surrounding Old City were designated a World Heritage Site in 2005, revitalizing Mostar as a prime tourism hub focused on its restored Ottoman-era mosques, bazaars, and bridge-diving spectacles, though the economy remains constrained by the lingering effects of wartime destruction and suboptimal post-war recovery.[6][3][1]
Post-war, Mostar endures de facto segregation with parallel Bosniak-led and Croat-led municipal services east and west of the Neretva, respectively, fostering governance paralysis under the ethnically apportioned system established by the 1994 Washington Agreement and Dayton Accords, which prioritizes ethnic quotas over functional administration and impedes reconciliation despite symbolic gestures like the bridge's restoration.[7][8][1]