War broke the Mostar bridge, one of the most emblematic buildings in the Balkans. Now, it has been triumphantly restored

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 2004 by Peter Davey

Lightning flickered in the mountains of the Mostar valley as its old pedestrian bridge was re-opened by Paddy Ashdown (the International Community High Representative) and the President of the Republic of Bosnia Herzegovina. A grand and sometimes cheerfully kitsch ceremony combined children's choirs, Beethoven's Ode to Joy (Bosnia is desperate to join the EC), Orff's Carmina Burana, a plangent marching Turkish brass band, brave divers, (1) rhythmic dancers, slightly torpid, whirling dervishes, and the biggest bangs and flashes since the end of the civil war between Croats (Catholics) and Muslims in 1994. That was the second war; in the first one, a federation of Croats and Muslims mastered Serbian (Orthodox) forces in 1992.

The bridge has been celebrated in innumerable postcards and, on the night, by what appeared to be most of the television companies of the world, who had all been jostling for key viewpoints days before the ceremony. Though it is a symbol for the re-unification of the city and the state, it does not link the traditional Croat and Muslim areas. It was built over the deep and fast-running River Neretva in the fifteenth century, shortly after the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans, to act as a key link in one of the Turkish Empire's main east-west trade roads. So the two halves of the centre joined by the bridge were predominantly Muslim. Restoration of these areas by a team led by Amir Pasic was given an Aga Khan Award in 1986 (AR November 1986, p94ff), but they were very heavily damaged in the subsequent civil conflicts. The Croat quarter is to the west across the Boulevard, a front line broken by gap-sites, petrol stations and deserted masonry shells. Croatian Mostar is more modern and much less picturesque than the Muslim parts, but now many of its largely concrete buildings remain poxed and partly ruined by war.

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But the bridge seems to be immaculate. Restored by UNESCO and the World Bank, it must look almost as it did in the fifteenth century. Yet the results have caused much controversy. For a start, many Croats object to it being restored at all. They think it should be left broken, as it was after one of their shells destroyed it on 9 November 1993. Almost all the stones of the original structure have been recovered from the icy green depths of the Neretva, but the authorities decided that they were too cracked and smashed to be reused. So they now lie about on the western side of the river, and the bridge (which had of course been very carefully measured over the years) has been replicated exactly in new stones. Only the worn (and rather slippery) paving pieces are from the original structure.

Furious arguments have raged about whether the symbolic bridge should look new, without any scars, or whether it should show the many traces of its history that are now thrown away in the heaps of old stones. It is a debate between restoration and conservation, between symbolic (perhaps forced) unification of communities and acceptance of past differences, between two very different kinds of cultural perception and celebration.

Such differences continue in the surrounding urban matrix. For instance, the Croats have built a tall, thin tower to signal the importance of their new poured-concrete cathedral. The campanile, though square in plan, is clearly based on the traditional minarets of surrounding mosques, but it has been made taller than they. It is a bizarre giraffe of a church spire, but built to make a point, and the cross that crowns it is echoed by another much more massive one on top of Hum Hill, the burly limestone mass that dominates the Mostar valley to the west.

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In contrast, many of the old Muslim buildings surrounding the approaches to the bridge have been faithfully and modestly restored to what they looked like before the civil wars. Another point is being made. In a programme jointly organized by the Historic Cities Support programme of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) and the World Monuments Fund (WMF), much of the historic Ottoman core has been preserved. The two bodies evolved a most thorough scheme for saving and adding to the best of the old city, ranging from a masterplan that has identified areas for expansion to details of how traditional buildings should be remade. (2)

The AKTC and the WMF set up an organization, the Stari grad Agency which, on behalf of the city (where the mayor and the deputy alternate between Croat and Muslim), now oversees implementation of the conservation plan, and restoring and operating specific buildings. Young architects, often of local origin, have been recruited from the Bosnian school in Sarajevo and trained in specialist techniques, as well as in exploring and fostering essential creative links between old buildings and new uses; Amir Pasic has been much involved. Stefano Bianca, Director of the Aga Khan Programme, stresses that there is no point in trying to restore buildings unless uses can be found for them. The main thrust of the new economy of central Mostar is tourism and, at the moment, it seems that the carefully organized terraces near the bridge are forcing-beds for the propagation of Coca-Cola umbrellas. Bonnie Burham, President of the World Monuments Fund, accepts that for the foreseeable future, Mostar will have to depend on visitors for much of its income, but she hopes that 'low impact, high-quality tourism' can be encouraged.