Building Bridges in Bosnia

It looks as if ambitious plans to reconstruct the celebrated Ottoman stone bridge in Mostar in all its former glory will soon be realised. The bridge was destroyed in vicious fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina earlier this decade. Muslims and Croats from Mostar wept together as Croat guns hammered the semi-elliptical sixteenth-century bridge into the icy waters of the River Neretva in November 1993.

Divers from the international peace-keeping security force in Mostar spent the past summer diving down up to 10 metres deep to bring up around 140 limestone chunks of the bridge structure. Visitors to the city can see the stones spread out on a platform on the river bank and examine the iron clamps filled with lead which the Ottoman builders used to hold the stones together nearly 450 years ago.

In the office of the Institute for the Preservation of Mostar in the Old City nearby, Suleman Demirovic sits at his computer lovingly putting the final touches to his on-screen sketches and computerised photographs of the blocks that have been retrieved. They have been numbered and classified.