CITY HALL

Since this is the city where many nations passed through, we have many different monuments. Sarajevo is a city where different cultures meet. On the left side of one street you can see monuments and buildings from the Ottoman period, then if you turn right you could see monuments from the Austro-Hungarian period. That is what makes this city unique as it is. Sarajevo City Hall or as we call it ‘Vjećnica’, used to be the biggest library at the time and also a place where Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been right before he was shot dead and also a place which was destroyed by the artillery and fire in 1992.

During the siege of Sarajevo. Although it seem nearly impossible to visit Sarajevo without at least some knowledge of the war that occurred here, it would be equally impossible to go and not notice the marks left from almost four years of fighting. These exact remainders could have been seen at the City Hall until three years ago, when it was reconstructed in the original style and reopened in 2014. I remember it like it was yesterday because finally for the first time in my life, even though Sarajevo is the city where I was born and raised, I saw the City Hall the way it should have been. For the first time I felt that despite everything that happened this city got the strength to get up and move on. Of course I went to visit so, as a history lover, first I went to see the museum created inside which included the old traditional clothing from the certain periods to pictures of the book and papers dancing in the fire when the City Hall was burnt down during the last war.

All in all, by reopening the City Hall, Sarajevo showed everybody that it is back on its feet again. Even today there is an anecdote being retold about the City Hall: Before the war in Sarajevo there was a story that circulated that a famous restaurateur Damir Lisac sold the City Hall. He was the third year of Law School and he was studying at the City Hall at the time. He went out to have a cigarette and saw a tourist looking at the building. He asked him if he would you buy it because he is friend with the owner. The man was from Busovaca, but 25 years ago he moved to America in Chicago and bought the property. Principal agrees to joke around with him so the man buys it. However, Damir Lisac goes to vacation with his friends from that money where police arrested him because he has to return it. This story is still retold at the Sarajevo bazaar. Damir Lisac is a famous lawyer, triple champion of Yugoslavia in motorcycle racing, and in Sarajevo known as the man who sold the City Hall.