The Stari Most: Can restored stones bridge the most bitter of divides?

Continuing his series reflecting on memorable tracks and pathways, Will Gore recalls a trip to Mostar, eight years after the end of Bosnia’s brutal war

Stari Most stood for 400 years before being destroyed by Croat shell fire in 1993 (Getty/iStock)

There are many bridges over the river Neretva in Mostar. But there’s only one that visitors really want to see: Stari Most, the “old bridge”, which isn’t so old in fact.

For anyone in the UK over the age of about 35, the arched bridge is best known for its destruction. When the former Yugoslavia descended into hideous civil war in the early 1990s, the rest of Europe watched on in near disbelief as former neighbours set out to slaughter one another.

The ancient Ottoman crossing in Mostar, which had stood for more than four centuries, became a media-friendly metaphor for the conflict – an edifice which had once united the town’s east and west, bludgeoned to rubble by artillery fire, as Croats and Bosniaks, former allies against Serb forces, turned viciously on one another.