Sarajevo with a stop for lunch in Mostar on the way
22 – 25 October, 2026

That was how our guide summed up the city as we left.

We’ve spent three nights in Sarajevo, a vibrant, multicultural city with a deeply scarred past.

The place where Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, in 1914 was just a few blocks from our hotel. It was an event that changed the world. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia and issued an ultimatum, which Serbia did not accept. Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, setting off a chain reaction of alliances and declarations of war that soon engulfed Europe. Russia mobilised in support of Serbia, Germany declared war on Russia and France, and Britain entered the war shortly afterwards. The assassination was the spark that ignited the First World War, although the underlying tensions ran much deeper. The result was a catastrophe that ultimately claimed around 20 million military and civilian lives.

Nearly 80 years later, Sarajevo found itself at the centre of another devastating conflict. The breakup of Yugoslavia led to the Bosnian War of 1992–1995, fuelled in large part by Slobodan Milošević’s Serbian nationalist ambitions and the Bosnian Serb leadership’s campaign to carve out territory for a separate Serb state. As in so many wars, truth was an early casualty. In this war, the death of humanity seemed to follow close behind. Atrocities were committed by forces on different sides, but the scale of the campaign waged by Bosnian Serb forces against Bosnian Muslims was particularly horrific.

The ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia) indicted 161 individuals. A significant majority of convictions were of ethnic Serbs, reflecting the tribunal’s findings regarding the primary instigators of systemic violence during the Balkan conflicts

Here is a summary of war crime convictions (info lifted from google!) :

Ethnic Background / Allegiance	Individuals Convicted	Notable Sentenced Figures
Serb / Bosnian Serb	60	Ratko Mladić (Life), Radovan Karadžić (Life)
Croat / Bosnian Croat	16	Jadranko Prlić (25 years), Slobodan Praljak (20 years)
Bosnian Muslim	4	Rasim Delić (3 years), Enver Hadžihasanović (3.5 years)
Kosovar Albanian	1	Haradin Bala (13 years)
Macedonian	1	Johan Tarčulovski (12 years)

We have not visited Serbia on this trip, so our impressions are necessarily limited. But the people we have spoken with have consistently emphasised how well different communities can get along, how people of different faiths live alongside one another, and how intermarriage across religious lines has long been part of life in the region. During our stay, we spoke with a Bosnian of Serb background, a Bosnian Muslim, our Croatian guide, and a Croatian woman we had met in Dubrovnik. Last night, we were also invited into the home of a local Sarajevo woman, with a translator helping us communicate. Chicken paprikash was served, and the conversation was as memorable as the meal. She described living in her 15^th floor apartment with her husband and two young daughters with the windows blown out in the middle of winter where they burned anything available for heat and cooking in the -15C temperatures: old clothes, shoes, flooring. They elected to be some of the 300,000 people who did not leave Sarajevo during the almost 4 year siege: She and the girls did not want to leave their policeman father behind.

Our guide told us that he had forgiven those responsible for the atrocities, but that he could never forget them. It was a powerful distinction.

And yet, the past has not entirely loosened its grip. The old nationalist political currents remain, particularly among some older generations. In parts of Bosnia, children still attend separate classes or schools according to their ethnic background, and different versions of the war are taught in different communities. The legacy of the conflict is not simply a matter of remembering what happened; it is also about how the next generation is taught to understand it.

Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb military commander convicted of genocide and other war crimes, including his role in the Srebrenica massacre, died in custody in The Hague just a few months ago. He was buried in Serbia with full military honors and a high-level public tribute that functioned as a state-backed hero’s funeral. His death is a reminder of how differently the same history can be understood on opposite sides of a border.

But perhaps there is reason for cautious optimism. Just yesterday, Serbia’s long-dominant political establishment suffered a historic election defeat, with a student-backed movement winning a parliamentary majority. It is far too early to know what this will mean for the region, but it may signal a generational shift and a willingness to move beyond the politics that have shaped the Balkans for decades.

In Sarajevo, the physical reminders of war are everywhere. The Sarajevo roses are perhaps the most striking. These are mortar-shell impact marks in the pavement where the pock marks have been filled with red resin. They commemorate particularly deadly impacts, where three or more people were killed. On other streets, buildings still bear the scars of bullets and shelling.

And yet, for the most part, Sarajevo has recovered. Buildings have been repaired, cafés and restaurants are full, and the streets are alive with people of different backgrounds going about their daily lives. There is laughter, conversation, music and the ordinary bustle of a city getting on with life.

Perhaps that is what our guide meant. A grave is a place where the past is buried. A garden is a place where something continues to grow.

Sarajevo has not forgotten its past, nor should it. But it has found a way to live beyond it. May it continue to grow.

Sorry for the delay in posting: it’s been a tough page to write. I’ll add pictures in the next day or so.