Mostar

People have lived on this stretch of the Neretva since prehistory, but the town first appears in writing on 3 April 1452, when merchants of Dubrovnik reported that Vladislav Hercegović had turned against his father, Duke Stjepan, and occupied it. The Ottomans took the region in 1468 and the town began to grow. Between 1520 and 1566 it was fortified and its wooden bridge was replaced in stone: the Old Bridge, ordered by Suleiman the Magnificent and designed by Mimar Hayruddin, a pupil of Sinan, about 28 metres long and 20 metres high, was soon regarded as a wonder of its time. The bridge keepers, the mostari, gave the town its name.

Austria-Hungary added an elegant new quarter around the Rondo and the Gymnasium of 1902. After the Second World War Mostar industrialised, producing aluminium, tobacco, wine, bauxite, plastics and aircraft, and between 1945 and 1980 its population grew from 18,000 to 100,000. In 1991 it had roughly equal numbers of Bosniaks and Croats and a large Serb minority.

The 1990s war divided it. In 1992 the city was besieged by the Yugoslav People's Army; in 1993 the Croat–Bosniak war split it along the Bulevar, with Croat forces holding the west and the Bosnian army the east, and on 9 November 1993 Croat shelling brought down the Old Bridge. Rebuilding began in 1999, and the bridge reopened on 23 July 2004; UNESCO inscribed it and its surroundings as a World Heritage Site in 2005. A unified city statute was imposed by the High Representative in 2004, but after a 2010 court ruling against its electoral rules no local elections could be held in 2012 or 2016, and none took place until 2020.

Diving from the Old Bridge is Mostar's defining ritual. Young men of the local diving club leap more than 20 metres into the cold Neretva after collecting money from onlookers, a formal competition has been held every summer since 1968, and since 2015 the bridge has also been a stop on the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series.

The city's cultural life has deep roots. The poet Aleksa Šantić gave his name to the poetry evenings held each year as part of the Mostar Summer programme, which also includes a summer festival and a choir festival, and Melodije Mostara, a music festival, has been held every year since 1995. Theatre has its own festivals, and the city has produced rock bands such as Zoster.

Division runs through public life. Mostar has the largest Croat population of any city in the country, and its two football clubs reflect the split: since the war Velež has generally been supported by Bosniaks and Zrinjski by Croats. FK Velež won the Yugoslav Cup in 1981 and 1986, while Zrinjski has won the Bosnian league many times. Two universities, separate schools and different flags on each side of the Bulevar complete the picture, and politics is best left for locals to raise.

About 60,000 people lived in the city itself at the 2013 census, and about 106,000 in the wider municipality, making Mostar the fifth-largest city in the country and the administrative centre of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton. Croats make up just under half of the city's population and Bosniaks a little less, with a small Serb community. The old town and the east bank are mainly Bosniak, while the west bank around the Rondo is mainly Croat.

The economy has long relied on the aluminium and metal industry, banking and telecommunications. Aluminij, the aluminium producer, is the sole remaining large company that was prominent in the Yugoslav era, and the city is one of the most important tourist centres in the south of the country. It has two universities: the University of Mostar, the only Croatian-language university in the country, and Džemal Bijedić University, founded in 1993.

Heat sets the rhythm. Summer days start early, slow down in the afternoon and resume in the evening, when people swim in the rivers and fill the café terraces. City politics remain fraught: the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2019 that the lack of local elections violated residents' rights, and elections were finally held the following year.

Mostar's cooking mixes the Ottoman kitchen with the Mediterranean flavours of Herzegovina. Local favourites include ćevapčići, burek, sarma, japrak, musaka, dolma, sujuk, đuveč, sataraš and dishes baked under the sač, the ember-covered iron lid. Ćevapi, made from two kinds of minced beef mixed by hand and shaped with a funnel, are served five to ten at a time in somun flatbread with chopped onion and kajmak, a creamy dairy product similar to clotted cream.

Sweets are rich and syrupy. Baklava, hurmašice, tulumbe, sutlijaš, šampita and tufahije, whole stewed apples stuffed with walnuts, are sold across the old town, often alongside Bosnian coffee, made from very finely ground beans and served unfiltered.

Herzegovina is wine country. Žilavka, a white grape planted mainly in the Mostar region, is bottled as a single varietal alongside Blatina, the other main grape of Herzegovina, and production is focused south of the city around Čitluk, Međugorje, Ljubuški and Čapljina. Rakija is the spirit for a toast.