Mostar

Mostar is Bosnia and Herzegovina's most visited city and one of the Balkans' most evocative destinations — a city of Ottoman minarets and Habsburg houses straddling the Neretva River, its defining image the Stari Most (Old Bridge), a 16th-century Ottoman arch bridge destroyed by shelling in 1993 and meticulously reconstructed, stone by stone, from the original Tenelija limestone. Standing on the Stari Most above the emerald-green Neretva River, looking back at the minarets and stone houses of the Kujundžiluk bazaar quarter on one side and the Tara Tower on the other, is one of the most beautiful urban experiences in Southeastern Europe. Local divers (the Red Cross diving club) leap from the bridge into the water below for a small fee — a tradition maintained for 450 years. The bazaar lanes are excellent for copper handicrafts, Bosnian coffee and baklava. The surrounding Old Town contains the Koski Mehmed Pasha Mosque (with climbable minaret), Ottoman houses converted to museums, and the excellent Museum of War and Genocide Victims — a necessary and sobering account of the 1990s conflict. The Stari Grad Visitor Centre and the Bridge Museum tell the history of the bridge and its reconstruction. Day trips to the Kravice Waterfalls (40km), Blagaj Tekke (a Dervish monastery at the source of the Buna River) and the Počitelj Ottoman village are all outstanding.